nothing but a packet of lies

In defence of high school history

2007-10-05T17:34:00.000+03:00

I’m sure we’ll all familiar with that popular school kid adage – if we have to forgive and forget then why learn history? Well, I’m afraid the answer isn’t quite as irreverent as it is made out to be but actually merits a great deal of thought and deliberation. Why indeed? What is so special about burying oneself in a corner of the room overwhelmed with dates that nobody remembers and names that nobody wants to? The education ministries of the world aren’t sadistic or genocidal, after all, even though they seem to be when we are taking our Board exams or O Levels. The answers are complex and not entirely comprehensible within one short essay but one must begin somewhere, so I shall try and highlight some salient causes for the inclusion of history in our otherwise happy lives.

The most basic definition of history is that it is a study of the past. The past is what we base our future on. It is the skeleton on which to assemble the organism of our tomorrows. Before composing poetry, one must learn how to read and write; before regaling amphitheatres with one’s voice, one must understand the grammar of music; before inventing great machines which revolutionise lives one must know what cogs and wires are. Similarly, prior to constructing grand visions and charting out a course of action for what is to come, we must be informed of all that came before. A thorough map of already traversed paths and used systems will govern our application of those ideas and devices to the present and, later, to the future.

Another reason to study history intimately is to have the education of errors. Mistakes made in the past mustn’t be repeated. This has to be taken care of, else, all human socio-cultural evolution must go waste. The philosopher, Georg Hegel posited that history comprises thesis – that which occurs; antithesis – that which opposes the occurrence and finally, the synthesis – the ultimate resolution of the conflict into a tangible manifestation along a linear pattern of space and time. The syntheses that have taken place in the time before ours must be assessed and evaluated to have their operation exposed – how they came about and the forces that shaped those instances. Whether it is war, rebellion, social and economic upheavals or even popular culture and folklore – history is an amalgam of all of these and must be discovered through all these factors which constitute it through this Hegelian logic. It will enlighten us to the anatomy of our shared legacy.

To fully plumb the depths of and appreciate the levels to which our ancestors had achieved excellence, one must be conversant with the heritage of one’s people and race – the human race. The Pyramids which throw their majestic shadow across Egyptian deserts or the Taj Mahal, an eerie and sad tribute to life and love – both are testimony to the skill and strength of those from whom we are descended. The grave scriptures of the Orient and the sophisticated science of the Occident, have through the centuries, enthralled and amazed. The acme of accomplishment that our foreparents have attained should not only awe and inspire us but instil in us pride for their magniloquence and our good fortune to reap what they have sown, culturally, spiritually, intellectually and even physically. The dawn of civilisation has left imprints in the form of history and it’s important to celebrate them.

What history can help us in achieving is open to debate and quite arguable.

In one sense, history imparts to us a context and manydetails to base any opinion on and thus conditions us to think wisely and completely. Whether we think Marxism was good or bad can only be inferred once we’ve read The Communist Manifesto and fathomed it. Consequently, we will decide whether we are with it or against it and then become more conscious of the choices and decisions we make vis-à-vis this particular belief. On the other hand, we might take these opinions to extremes and exaggerate our devotion to Marxism and morph into militant leftists. Thus, while history can lay bare before us facts dispassionately, it is ultimately up to us how we react to the discoveries and information. History can tell, it cannot teach.

Often people don’t learn from their mistakes and history is rendered useless. For example, in 1994 genocide in Rwanda ripped the country apart and the whole world watched without saying a word. That was a gross error, true. In 2006, the crisis in Darfur escalated to genocidal proportions and again, the world is watching. Yet another error? Is it pardonable? Of course not. History did warn us of the results of our apathy but it was we who chose not to listen. This is the limit of history – to stop where personal ethics begin. But again, history does do its duty in rankling us every morning when we open the newspaper or switch on the telly – it reminds us and taunts and shames us into drawing out the memory of the horrific catastrophe so that, little by little, much more voices than ever rose then are rising up now. Such is the power of history – to force conscience.

Finally, the most potent tool that history wields is the timeline and tapestry of human development to draw from. The resources and ramifications – moral and mental and menial – which abound for us to extract diligently and use sagaciously are many. A throbbing library of faces, places, time and space resides within us and within the environment around us. History isn’t about forgiving and forgetting, it is about living the present better than we lived the past and bettering the future with wisdom from both.

Perhaps the most startling and direct contact with history often comes in odd ways. For me, it was when I visited the caves at Ajanta and Ellora and ran my hands across the sculpted divinities and people and pageantry set in rock forever. As my fingers touched the cold stone, electricity crackled through them, as if transmitting the wonder and hard work, across centuries, of fellow tourists and the artists who had created the masterpieces. As if the pain staking perfectionism of the seventh century craftsmen toiling away in the glow of sunset; the joy and admiration of tenth century Persian scholars as they gazed upon the marvel and the excitement that thrilled through a twenty first century teenager were the exactly the same.

And perhaps, just perhaps, they were.

The clueless review the 'halo'ed

2007-10-02T16:41:00.000+03:00

The release of the final instalment in the Halo series has gotten game geeks all over the world in a tizzy. I have reviewed the game as a novice, with assistance from acquaintances who are, in fact, experts on the world of virtual sport.

The general consensus seems to be that Halo 3, while interesting enough to enjoy on a Thursday night, is not exactly revolutionising videogame technology or exceeding the bar set by its predecessors very much. Its overwhelming popularity might seem overrated to a great many enthusiasts and indeed one would assume that any game that has earned as much as this franchise has, must be catering to a rather broad and unselective demographic. Let’s just put it this way: if you’re a fan of the Halo series, you’ll love this and if you’re not, you won’t. It isn’t one of those revelatory gaming experiences that converts people and changes their opinions. On the contrary, Halo 3 is just a slight improvement on Halo 2.

The story is simple enough: humanity must battle the Flood and the Covenant, under the leadership of the Master Chief. The game has a pretty interesting array of enemies and weapons, both of which surround the player so much that it’s hard to concentrate on one or the other. But that seems to be the objective in the first place – how to off the maximum number of foes while juggling the ammo in the most creative manner possible. There are loathsome little bogeys which flee at the first sign of danger (mostly the Flood) and then there are the huge, evil machines out to get you (the Covenant – hell bent on ridding the world of the Flood and humans alike). There are even wisecracking Space marines who help the players to battle this motley crew. The weapons on display are all sorts – sniper rifles, pistols, shotguns, flame throwers and even sledgehammers that can hack a monster with the first blow. The flares and shields added to differentiate the game from its previous instalment come off as a bit perfunctory but the overall feel of the action is a lotta fun and the scope of war is grand. There is also a sense of verisimilitude as one leaps in and out of tanks, hovercrafts and what-have-you, dodging attacks by the powerful nemeses.

The thing is, the single-player format is what it is, but it is Halo’s multiplayer experience that has catapulted it to such cult status. The special features which comprise the multiplayer format include greater mobility within the game, bonus accessories to help the human heroes and even supernatural abilities that don’t need weapons. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind sensation to be playing the game with other accomplished players; the design is riveting and the pace, electric.

Not the most groundbreaking videogame ever but good enough to spend an evening in with your mates, waging war. It’s one of those things that every reviewer fears while writing because there’s a chance that he/she will end up on the hit list of aforementioned game geeks. But that’s just a risk we’ll have to take – after all, Microsoft didn’t with this game, so somebody has to.

RATING: 3/5

Free Omar Khadr

2007-10-02T16:40:00.001+03:00

Omar Khadr is a little older than we are – 21. Unlike us, however, he is not young and carefree. Unlike us, he doesn’t do homework; he doesn’t watch football on weekends and he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Omar Khadr is a detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

At age 15, the Canadian citizen was captured in Khost, Afghanistan, a child soldier of sorts, who had lobbed a bomb that killed an American sergeant who was leading his troops into the compound where Mr. Khadr was hiding. Imprisoned immediately, the list of human rights violations against him are not just shocking but enraging. That an adolescent, caught in the middle of an outright battle, should defend himself and then be punished so heinously for it is unthinkable. Sgt. Speers, who was at the receiving end of Mr. Khadr’s bomb, might have killed him instead – by accident or design, that is immaterial – but that would have been somehow acceptable, because American soldiers maiming and murdering civilians on the battlefield is, for some reason, much less unforgivable than an innocent Muslim boy trying to protect himself. Of course, America claims that it has footage of Mr. Khadr planting mines and a confession of espionage. But then again, America’s track record with truth is highly suspect – remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction?

In the meantime, Mr. Khadr has been denied access to lawyers, kept in extended isolation, withheld medicines from, to use his pain as means of surrender during interrogation and essentially brutalised, physically and psychologically – he was short-shackled and contorted into stress positions repeatedly. When Canadian newspaper, Toronto Star got their hands on a report compiled by Canadian Intelligence on their meeting with Mr. Khadr, it explicitly stated that he had bruises all over his body and had seemed to have been the victim of multiple assaults. Newsday’s Muneer Ahmed noted how the Pentagon sabotaged legal help for detainees and reported how Mr. Khadr’s account of abuse had been redacted by the American authorities to prevent their leakage. One of Mr. Khadr’s lawyers was even intimated of the horrific treatment meted out to prisoners, rather gleefully, by some Guantanamo’s guards. The US Department of Defence maintains its hypocrisy as they assure the world that the children in Gitmo are provided with all the counsel and support including education and health to help rehabilitate them into society. But all accounts with regard to Mr. Khadr state just the opposite.

The Canadian Government has, so far, done nothing which can be classified as noteworthy or taken the sort of step that a responsible government should be taking if its citizen rots in jail, under pretexts that are all too vague (Mr. Khadr had nine charges levelled against him, five of which were dismissed) and keeping in mind the age of the defendant at the time of the crime. That Mr. Khadr committed one is not being argued here, what is being said is that the administrations of the USA and Canada are turning a blind eye to the fact that a teenager was being punished for the sins of his family and father. All the boys in Mr. Khadr’s family, including his older brother Abdurrahman Khadr, were sent to military school at ages as young as 11. In the formative years of one’s growth, if one is brainwashed into violence and bombarded with knowledge cast in the shades of propaganda and terrorism, one is likely to accept and internalise those teachings. Can a 15 year old boy be held responsible for the machinations of the adults in his life? If those adults were terrorists, does it become OK to inflict punishment on the boy? This whole business seems nothing but a perverse revenge drama being played out at the expense of international law and civil rights. The Canadian Government is showing itself to be racist and deferential to the US government by refusing to take adequate steps. It is proving to a weak and impotent aegis for its citizens. One wonders if they would be as indifferent if Omar Khadr were John Smith.

Amnesty International has also urged Canada to be more forthcoming its support of Mr. Khadr. While it is true and unsurprising that his family has little popular support in Canada, governments are guided by a higher justice and obligation towards their people, not by opinion polls. It is time Canada’s parliament stepped in and joined the fight that its youth have started to free Mr. Khadr. It must exert pressure on and demand explanations from the American government as to why Mr. Khadr continues to be held in the notorious facility despite most allegations against him having been dropped; indeed, what the remaining allegations are; what their evidentiary support is and why a fair trial has not been accorded to him even if he is in fact guilty of the charges. Canada must force the American government to explain the instances of torture and torment Mr. Khadr was subjected to and why all human rights were thrown out the window. Finally, Canada must insist on knowing how American soldiers are pardoned for the same crimes that the rest of the world’s civilians are thrown into horrific dungeons for and why a minor was treated as an adult throughout the whole process and period of detainment. In doing all this, Canada will pull the US down from its self-satisfied throne of insulation and induce accountability in its dealings with the global community, both military and otherwise.

The world needs to stop forgiving the atrocities that America commits, both on individuals and on nations. This time Canada needs to forget the Biblical adage of ‘Love thy neighbour’ and concentrate instead on the humanitarian ideals of freedom and justice. Canada needs to bring Omar Khadr home.

France's Stance: Much Too Right For Its Own Good?

2007-09-21T17:18:00.000+03:00

The Lower House of the French parliament cleared the Immigration Bill on the 19th of September. The bill aims to make knowledge of the French language and proof of solvency mandatory and includes voluntary DNA testing by immigrants to be enforced legally. This step has sparked controversy not only in Paris but created ripples of discomfort all over Europe and Africa.

In the recent past, legislations like this, curbing immigrant rights and marring the freedom of residence for certain ethnic groups, have been much debated in European governments. Germany in 2004 and Greece in 2001 have both tried to control their burgeoning foreign populations, often, as in the case of the latter, with disgraceful provisions.

France, at least in this past century, has provided asylum to millions and has sought to fashion itself as a sort of continental counterpart to the United States, with its diverse, multi-religious cosmopolises being held up as icons of cultural harmony and integration. As it turns out, there is trouble in paradise. As long ago as 1997, France had engaged in argument with the European Union about their anti-immigrant proposals. Back then, the National Front, France’s far-right party had suggested measures like seeking permission from mayors to allow foreign arrivals and informing the police on the departure of the same. Recoiling in the wake of the outrage, the government hastily withdrew the bill.

These ultra-conservative sympathies of France have come back to haunt them a decade later, with UMP leader and president Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing administration seeking to deliver on all those promised he’d made during his presidential campaign – to expel up to 25,000 immigrants from France by 2010, a claim that some see as nothing but fanciful and disingenuous political lobbying on the part of Mr. Sarkozy (himself the son of Hungarian émigrés), as he disregards both his nation’s real, ground-level population predicaments and panders to the closet bigotry in his cabinet. Mr. Sarkozy’s extremist sensibilities have often been the subject of debate, most prominently in July this year, when he condemned Africa as immune to, indeed, incapable of progress and proceeded to inject a thinly veiled denial of any exploitation of Africa on France’s part at all. Even during his two terms as Interior Minister, Mr. Sarkozy endeavoured to tighten police authority on the streets of the country and cemented his status as a somewhat autocratic, oppressive chief. In 2006, he had called for integrated immigration reforms to be drafted and accepted by all EU nations, presumably as a direct attack on perpetrators of the 2005 riots in Paris, which he had hinted as having been caused by illegal immigrants. This is shockingly similar to the National Front’s 1997 party-line that it was immigrants who were snatching employment away from natives. Interestingly enough, it was Mr. Sarkozy who, in his bid to lessen the gap between the Church and State, had called for government subsidies to mosques to allow Muslims to be further assimilated into French society, assisted in the establishment of a national Muslim council and also expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities. This makes for an interesting case of contradictory political dynamics within the current government. One wonders whether Mr. Sarkozy was simply trying to appease those immigrants that he so fervently wishes to oust, to garner votes for his eventual presidency or whether he genuinely believes that non-Christians and non-Caucasians deserve a place in the French Republic. Expediency or xenophobia? Where does his allegiance lie?

While civil rights have not always been on his agenda, many experts claim that Mr. Sarkozy isn’t the only one worried about the effects of mass immigration on French society. While it is true that modern France was founded on the much vaunted principles of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ (a knowledge of which all applicants for entry into the country must now possess), it is also true that all developed nations, recovering from their 20th century post-colonial guilt trip, feel that their penance has been long drawn out – it is time they became selective about the sort of aliens they allowed within their walls. And after all, it is easy to preach tolerance when one doesn’t have to practise it. It is only in the past 20 years or so that the influx of customs absolutely dissimilar to mainstream Gallic traditions has seeped in. As a sidebar, EU’s Justice Commissioner, Franco Frattini’s announcement to grant blue cards (analogous to the USA’s green cards) is a propellant to examining and devising new European migration legal modalities. Skilled workers with proper backgrounds are always welcome but the tide of poverty-stricken, disenfranchised and destitute civilians without any discernable talent to contribute to the society or economy, are being shut out. With this law, however, a one-size-fits-all strategy of discrimination and deportation is being put into force. While opinion polls show that the majority are in favour of this, these are the same people who voted for a Christian democracy touting government in the first place. Should all suffer because of a few? And isn’t the DNA testing clause overtly racist? Genetic profiling is a potent fear among minorities all over the world and this sort of blatant requirement in no way qualifies France’s claim to egalitarianism.

Finally, it’s important that the Left speak out with vehemence against this wave of reactionary resentment against men and women who have helped to build a nation. France must take an unequivocal stand – will it abide by its centuries old model of freedom or succumb to the pressures of the Western world’s newly recovered conceit?

Reviews: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Atonement

2007-09-17T21:27:00.000+03:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

The hoopla surrounding the release of any book is almost always inversely proportional to the actual quality of the book – the greater the pre-emptive hype, the more chances there are of the work itself being undeserving of it. At the risk of incurring the wrath of most of our readers, I must pare away the cocoon of complacency enveloping the Harry Potter books and reveal the seventh book to be nothing but a less-than-mediocre conclusion to an otherwise fairly entertaining saga. The plot basically revolves around Harry and gang rising up for the final time to defeat the newly replenished forces of evil lead by Lord Voldemort. However, in having tried to keep the much delayed denouement a secret, Ms. Rowling eschews the breezy, rollicking structure of the previous six novels for the tedium and compendiousness of this last instalment.

To begin with, the protagonist is overshadowed by his sidekicks – the novel might as well have been called ‘Hermione Granger and the Deathly Hallows’. Almost all the main action occurs as a result of Harry’s friends coming up with ingenious plans and then pulling them off. Secondly, every plan, every scheme seems a mite too convenient to feel real; unlike the former books’ claustrophobia and heightened sense of adventure, the effect in Hallows is like a Bond movie, where you already know that every problem is solvable, every odd surmountable and at times there is an almost comical usage of the deus ex machina to overcome obstacles. There is very little thrill or tension because of this, and ultimately, the impact is rather tepid. Then there is the narrative’s propensity to sag and buckle under the weight of its own cloying intricacies. The flow is mired by all sorts of subplots which come off as afterthoughts rather than actual accessories to the story. And furthermore, one gets a sense of a frantic hurry to fit in every unresolved coda in this last chance to wrap up this sequence of events. Another hiccup is the lazy characterisation of the villain and a few newly introduced minor characters. They never quite ring true – their motives are decidedly shallow and their personas one-dimensional. Finally, the ending is written more like cheesy fan fiction than a sophisticated attempt at tying up loose ends. It is rather surprising that a writer as experienced as Ms. Rowling would succumb to such a parlour-trick version of an ending. A masterful finale that leaves an aftertaste of satisfaction, contemplation and closure is the hallmark of a good author. Unfortunately, Ms. Rowling was unable to live up to the dramatic build-up she had conjured up for herself.

In closing, Hallows is the least exciting and smuggest convergence of storylines that one could have imagined, given the pedigree of the earlier books. Slow, banal, limp and safe – some of the worst adjectives one can use for this much loved heptology – unfortunately, must be used with absolute validity here.

RATING: 2/5

Atonement

A tragic love story of chaos and order, cast in shades of guilt and penance – the only way to describe Ian McEwan’s sublime study of error and its indelible repercussions. This review is meant to refresh memories rather than update opinions, in light of the recently premiered film version of the book, which was released six years ago.
The story is simple enough: A girl on the cusp of adolescence, thirteen year old Briony Tallis, witnesses her older sister Cecilia and her charlady’s son Robbie mid-affair and, in a childish fit of confusion and inexperience, accuses Robbie of a heinous crime that he didn’t commit. She spends the rest of her life atoning for her own crime – eliminating the innocence of another person as revenge for her own having been replaced with the knowledge of adult pleasures.

The novel’s motion is akin to tightening a screw – the ventilation of the first few chapters slowly being overcome by an increasing discomfort and unease as the story advances towards its climax. When the last groove of the screw disappears into the machine of the book, there begins the factory of stark, raw materials being processed into an intelligible aftermath. The narrative then flashforwards a few years and is split into three voices – those of Briony, Robbie and Cecilia – and propelled towards its ending. It as if all three protagonists undergo their own self-punishment. Robbie is embroiled in World War II, immersed deep in the horrors of the losing British army; Briony relinquishes her literary ambitions in favour of nursing and Cecilia, quietly, bitterly, hates Briony and loves Robbie, also as a nurse.

The glorious inversion of their personal ambitions and natures to depict their self-flagellation is profound – gentle, scholarly Robbie, with his aspirations to medicine and diligence in rising above his penurious origins to achieve a degree at Cambridge ultimately ends up getting wounded rather than healing, as he dissolves into what might have been his life had he remained poor and uneducated – a common soldier. Briony, no doubt a gifted writer, banishes her ability for fantasy and make-believe for the menial, practical staidness of medicine and bold, tempestuous Cecilia, whose love for Briony and indifference to Robbie, changed to resentment for one and pining for the other. The theme of anarchy and concord is played out like a motif in a mournful ballad – from Briony’s obsessive cleanliness contrasted with Cecilia’s penchant for disarray to the messy war which Robbie is part of, juxtaposed with Briony and Cecilia’s deceptively neat, sanitary hospital world. However, their psyches are in direct opposition to their environment, yet again showing the exchange of surroundings and sentiment – Robbie remains controlled and lucid despite the commotion he participates in, at Dunkirk; Briony struggles in quiet but catastrophic anguish in her perfect, draconian routine and Cecilia with her aloof, private trauma floats, half dead, in the cesspool of her own demons despite her affluence of intellect and spirit.

In conclusion, Atonement is a voyeuristic chronicle of simmering revulsion, the devastation of human folly and masochistic apology. It expresses the insidious nature of righteous mistakes and the consumptive quality of remorse and shame with precision, poetry and most of all, purity.

RATING: 4.5/5

Review: The IT Crowd

2007-09-14T21:28:00.000+03:00

One of the best made shows I’ve ever seen is The Office. When I heard that the producers of that veritable chronicle of middle management woes were now bringing us a show about two dorks and a damsel, I winced, assuming the worst.

And boy was I wrong.

Grudgingly, I tuned into Star World at 10.30 on Thursday night, prepared for a half-baked joke or two squeezed out of the hackneyed premise of a couple of socially challenged nerds plunked next to a daffy bimbo. My reluctance changed to relish within a matter of minutes – The IT Crowd is not a show about losers struggling to fit into the real world. It’s a show about losers blissfully unaware of life beyond a computer screen. And throw in their foxy, eccentric boss who doesn’t even know what CD stands for and we have a ‘win’age a trois.

Roy, Moss and Jen are the titular threesome who operate, or rather, attempt to operate from their subterranean office, in the basement. While neurotic Roy affects disdain for his job, reflected in his habit of asking customers who call whether they’ve tried turning their computers off and on again before they can even say hello, Moss needs three increasingly large pair of spectacles to process any sentence with the word ‘plan’ in it. As for gizmo-virgin, Jen, she bluffed her way through her interview with the frighteningly earnest and equally technologically impaired boss, Denholm, and was appointed head of the IT department.

The pilot episode revolves around the two basement banished pariahs trying to oust their lovely, loopy ‘leader’ out but ultimately establishing a mutually convenient relationship, which teeters on the most classic English comedy, with all its much revered satire, sarcasm and sophisticated buffoonery.

The chemistry among the leads is palpable, as they negotiate excellent timing and relinquish comic territory almost imperceptibly, for the sake of making the audience laugh. It’s refreshing to see three exceptionally talented young comedians support each other so well and contribute so equally to the narrative. The story is surprisingly layered with the contrast, between the upper world of elegant spaces and glamorous people and the shoddy, depressing dungeon where our three misfits live, depicted very well. Even the secondary characters perform with much élan in the limited time they are given. Although there is a laugh track, it doesn’t seem to force laughter from the audience and is rather unnecessary since the jokes are funny enough without being expressly identified as such.

The running theme throughout of course is the lack of connection that these troglodytes have to the actual, blue-skies-and-green-grass world. They dwell and revel in their obscure inside gags, such as Roy sporting a new geektastic shirt everyday and have absolutely no desire to engage in normal human activities like dating as in the case of the boys and telling the truth in the case of the girl.

Although Jen is quite obviously a popular person who has no trouble interacting successfully with fellow carbon based bipeds (as they appear to Roy and Moss), when she attempts to cause Roy and Moss’ much delayed initiation into adult society by throwing an ‘IT Department Party’, Moss thoroughly, unwittingly sabotages it.

There is initially a dislike between the two inadequate men and the clueless woman but their attempts to exit the disagreeable nature of events are thwarted and they resign themselves to the partnership. This reflects the sedimentation of Jen, both literally and metaphorically, as she ‘settles down’ at the bottom of the building, the corporate ladder and in terms of relationships with men. It also shows the eternal stagnancy of Roy and Moss.

Roy, more amenable to normalcy, is doomed, because of his near co-dependency on Moss, to never be able to quit the overgrown, contradictory child he has become. Like the smart slacker kid who mopes about school because he thinks he’s too good for it, Roy on one hand gets giddy about anything with wires and on the other, loathes what he has to do for a living because it’s too easy.

Moss…well…is just Moss. If the geeks shall inherit the earth, he’ll be the king, queen, president and prime minister all rolled in one. He believes in enunciation, esoteric references to computers all the time and is always itching to plug in or type something.

With this gawky, gormless gang invading my TV set every weekend, I hardly need to worry about tickling my funny bone. I highly recommend this ace, endearing Britcom to everyone. This is what really goes on at your local Tech Support!
RATING: 4/5

I'm quitting tomorrow

2007-06-17T06:54:00.001+03:00

American Psycho: Putting the 'man' in 'maniac'

2007-05-23T00:20:00.000+03:00

OK, so first of all, the guy is RIPPED!!Ahem.I'm trying very hard to ignore the sex appeal of Christian Bale as I write this but I suppose that kind of IS the whole point of American Psycho. As long as you're rich,handsome and successful, it doesn't matter what you do in the wee hours of the night. So maybe everyone's favourite pastime isn't hacking unwitting co-workers to death with Huey Lewis and the News playing n the background but hey, what do you know?

There are lots of reasons for liking a film like American Psycho.

First of all, it's a brilliant satire of 80s America and its warped mores. The self-absorbed consumerism and yuppie narcissism of these neophytes in their Christian Lacroix couture is so well navigated that it almost submerges the meta-superficiality that imprints the film. It's almost as if the film pretends to be shallow for the sake of being true to its content in a perversely sly loop around the viewer's expectations and reactions to the events on screen.

Second of all, it's a great character study...in non-characters. All the characters are so absorbed in their own prosaic lives that they don't even pay attention to what the maniac amidst them is up to.It's telling that everytime a character asks him what he does/is doing, he mentions his murderous sensibilities and nobody bats an eyelid. And as for Pat Bateman himself, he's such an assembly line zombie, such a non-entity, that he could disappear and nobody would notice.Everybody is a copy of everybody else, so in a world of clones, if one vanishes, who could make out? His voiceover at the end when he says that he simply is not there...that sums up the utter nihilism and purposelessness of his won existence.

Third of all, there is such biting dark comedy lacing the entire progression of the two hour story.One could argue that there is no story, and there kind of isnt but then that again points to the absolute hollowness of the lives of these..ghosts.Everything Bateman does or says is some kind of hyper-real histrionic meant to scandalise and shock...a sort of attention grabbing stunt to break out of the monotony.There is such ambiguity about his exploits that by the end we are left confused as to whether he actually did all those things or not.His spouting of the monologue on Huey Lewis as "Hip to be Square" scored his killing of Paul says it all.It sounds like a magazine article. The apathy and boredom of the Baby Boomers, especially the loaded bourgeoisie in their fancy cars and plush apartments is completely encapsulated in that one sequence. Having absolutely no moral or philosophical roots to return to, they resorted to cheap thrills...a fact exaggerated and melodramatised in the way Bateman kills Paul for having a better visiting card than he does. The hilarious scene in the boardroom where his voiceover angrily,dangerously and bitterly explains the font,paper and size of a cardboard chit for which he would later kill, underscores the tragicomic existentialist crisis that privileged WASPs like him were struggling with, in Reagan era social depression.

Finally, to the feminists who cried themselves hoarse talking about the mistreatment of women in the movie, the director Mary Harron is a woman herself. The interpretation of the original novel is structured according to a woman's vision and therefore, adds a whole new dimension to the treatment of women in the film.Personally, the novel was far more sexist and chauvinist in the way it portrayed women but on screen, the effect is wry and canny rather than an adolescent male dealing with his fear of women (which is what Bret Easton Ellis came across as, at least to me). In the film, the essential asshole-ness of Bateman is played off against both the vapid, vile machinations of his equally bitchy fiance, the unsuspecting hookers whom he picks up and the gloomy, helpless bimbo he's sleeping around with (his friend's fiance)...covering pretty much all bases. However, in all these cases it's Bateman who's the neurotic, conniving jerk trying to get his own way and gratify himself, rather than any of the women being in any way responsible for augmenting his actions...in a sense becoming passive rather than active. A school of thought could argue that it therefore regresses into more anti-women territory by making them conform to the traditional role of doee rather than doer...but the fact remains that all the characters, inlcuding the men, suffer from that flaw of spectral inertia..serving the purpose only of the ludicrous protagonist.

American Psycho may not be the best film I've ever seen. But it definitely was one of the funniest.

Are parents accountable for their children's behaviour?

2007-04-26T12:12:00.000+03:00

Imagine you are six years old.

The class bully shoves you. You shove back.

A broken nose later, you’re with two adults who can (a) explain to you how violence never solves anything or (b) admonish you for adding to their workload by getting hurt. Now imagine that these people are your parents.

A decade later, you’ll either switch channels whenever you see blood OR you’ll think that it’s OK to get into fights as long as your folks don’t find out about them.

As toddlers, we develop attributes like trust and hope depending on how much love, affection and security our parents provide us with. (Erikson)

Emotional regulation and stability are instilled in a child through the use of parents as social references. If a distressed child sees her parent unruffled, she will soon learn to be unafraid of the situation. (Bornstein, 2002)

Our sense of morality is understood and internalized thanks to the value education imparted by our parents. (Hoffman)

A 2003 study by Finnish psychologists shows that parental BELIEF in their child’s academic success has a very strong effect on how they actually perform. (Aunola, Nurmi, Lerkkanen and Raku Puttonen)

As for the argument that parents aren’t spending enough time with their children and it’s their friends who really mould them into the people they are, well, THAT is rendered invalid by the findings of studies such as the Parke and Bhavnagari research of 1989 which find a very strong correlation between parental intervention and children’s choice of cohorts and their response to peer pressure, well into adolescence.

This is nothing new. After all, parents have tried to protect their kids from bad company since time immemorial – Shakespeare’s Henry IV famously warned young Hal to avoid “vulgar companions” such as Falstaff.

It’s interesting to note that in a survey carried out on teenagers who dined with their parents more than 5 nights a week, 86% had never tried smoking or drinking. (The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2003)

Weight problems and career decisions, too, have been found to have been affected most by…you guessed it…parents. (Birch and Fisher, 1998)

Seems like science seems to agree with you when you say, “It’s all my parents fault!”

Before we blame them for everything that goes wrong in our lives though, let’s zoom out. Looking at the big picture, one sees how some great social events and cultural revolutions of our times have happened because of a generation gap. Repressed youth awoke to its vitality in the Flower Power era of the 60s, for example, rebelling against their parents’ straitjacketed mores and ideas.

Nature and nurture are both the fundamental determinants of a human being’s persona. Through genes and DNA on one hand and the milieu that we are exposed to on the other, our parents are directly responsible for both. Tall parents mostly have tall children. Similarly, affectionate and responsive parents who encourage communication raise healthy, productive citizens of the world. Not Bart Simpson.

Our parents are our very first introduction to life. Holding their fingers, we take our first step; hearing their voices we fall asleep and lisping their names, we learn to talk. To discount their contribution to our present and future is not only unfair, it is impossible. We are who we are because of them, for better or for worse. A straight A report card might elicit a “takes after me”. A packet of Marlboro may not. Their neglect or attention decides our self worth and success. Everything we do can be traced back to the teachings they’ve imbibed in us. We cannot forget that.

Fear

2007-04-09T01:31:00.000+03:00

“Boo.”

That’s three letters. Said with the proper inflexion and the right amount of menace, in the dark preferably, when you’re standing right behind the dork from Computer Science, it can produce a terrifying effect. Just three letters. Can command such fear.

At the very least they can offer you an opportunity for said dork to do something ridiculous enough to put on Youtube.

The novelist H.P. Lovecraft once called fear the strongest and oldest of human emotions. There is indeed something very primal, very basic about the feeling of dread – an almost inherent reaction to situations and phenomena that we may never have come across. Perhaps the history of fear is, in many ways, the most vital link we have to the past. It has remained constant and unaltered, uncontrolled and autonomous, since the very origin of humanity.

It is interesting to note that while all other emotions might have had protocol and custom to rein them in over time, fear alone has been that dark beast which refuses to be tamed by civilisation. It is so organic and so potent in its force that it can erupt within us unexpectedly and uninhibitedly and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It is a feral response to being attacked, to the sense of danger and to the need to escape, among innumerable other things. Our ancestors, sitting outside their caves at night, building fires and crowding around them at night to ward off predators and, later, evil spirits present a sort of universal metaphor for the whole idea of being afraid.

Across centuries and countries, our collective consciousness has been aware of the feeling of anxiety and horror at the perils of the human condition – be they physical, like death, or social, like poverty. Or reading the words “Some Assembly Required”. It can all be traced back to the anchor of Darwinism. Psychologists such as John B. Watson and Paul Ekman have argued that fear, along with a few other basic emotions such as joy and anger, is innate in all human beings, regardless of geography or history. However, just like our societies, our fears too have been reorganised, reinvented and repolarised over the course of millennia. Where once, being hunted to death by some gigantic animal may have been our primary source of fright, today, contracting avian flu might just top the list. But these are the broader, big picture manifestations of the emotion, relative to time and space, contingent on the environment in which we live in.

Fear can exist even in the vacuum of our existence – an isolated, atomic world unto itself, which resides within us as the only contact we have with all that is the deepest, the darkest and the most deadly, both within and without us. In that sense, fear can be utterly detached from the matrix of our being and instead, serve as an interface between our perceptions and our realities. Should all the feelings between happiness and sadness be outlawed, fear alone needn’t depend on our complete and undivided attention and is the most natural. For example, the fear of closed spaces or claustrophobia, some scientists claim, arises from the nine months spent inside the mother’s womb, when every instinct propels us towards getting out. At that stage of our lives we are nothing but blobs of carbon, and yet, in a very odd way, we fear being left inside, never being able to exit the cramped, small space, a fear that carries over to our adult lives even. Fear, thus, is the very first emotional experience we undergo perhaps and one which is so powerful that it remains with us till our last breath.

We’re all familiar with the sensation of terror that used to creep over us as children, lying in bed in the dark, clutching our teddy bears and straining to hear the sound of the television in the living room, the slightest noise making us jump or snuggle under the bedcovers, tightly shutting our eyes and moving closer to the centre of the bed, so that whatever monster lurked in the dark space beneath wouldn’t be able to reach out and grab us. Or the scene in Hitchcock’s seminal fright-flick, Psycho, when Janet Leigh turns around, screams and the next thing you know, there’s blood on the walls where she’d stood. Of course, that being a black and white film, the blood was actually chocolate sauce. The point is, like every element of the human mind, fear also is part nature and part nurture.

Claustrophobia may be a product of birth but something like, say, Arachibutyrophobia or, more specifically, fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth, doesn’t seem to have much to do with biology. Culture plays an extremely important role in determining fear, as the example of ecological naïveté proves.

If a group of animals are born and bred on an isolated island, they would respond indifferently to the arrival of predators, should the latter be suddenly introduced because they wouldn’t be aware of the threat they pose. Thus, unlike the rudimentary alarm that surges through all humans because of our common genetic heritage and evolutionary past, complex fears are mostly cultivated. I mentioned earlier the redefinition of fame and how it mutates from time to time, taking on new meanings. This was in reference to these intricate, multifaceted reasons for fear. The more we develop socially and psychologically, the more our fears too will compound until perhaps, there will come a time when only the kernel of our base horror shall remain within the convoluted architecture of our personal and public demons.

Soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the United States began what is considered a strategy of tension and actively instilled fear in its people through propaganda and paranoia – it manufactured terror. Popular culture and mass media now do wield this power, this authority over us to guide and direct our sentiments to the extent of channeling them for political clout.

The example of feeling that horrible trepidation at night in bed as kids stems not from any primordial spontaneity but from having been habituated to feel so, from having been told campfire stories about bogeys who carried away little children at night. Similarly, generations of moviegoers find it hard to step into a bathtub without thinking of the memorable chocolate sauce. Book lovers still get the chills at night when they imagine Dracula or Frankenstein skulking up to grab them from their comfy couches. Gruesome urban legends, right from the one about the college student who opened dorm room door only to find her roommate murdered to the one about people sitting down on cinema seats only to discover they’ve been pierced by intentionally placed HIV positive syringes, exemplify the groupthink mentality that has pervaded the whole concept of being scared. Fear, like everything else, can now be created and enforced and, though a lot less than other emotions, be manipulated by an omniscient, enfranchised quasi-government that organizes the global information system. It has become a marketing tool (just look at the box office receipts for horror movies in the past 2 years), a political pawn and a social conditioner.

Finally, I would like to sum up by saying that fear, in and of itself, is neither to be scorned nor to be embraced. It is part of who we are as a species and as a society. It limits us in many ways, sometimes reducing us to inert, perspiring half-wits with treacle for a brain. I mean, come on, you paid your 2.5 for the cinema seat so you can’t get out, the air conditioner isn’t working apparently so you’re building up that sweat and when are they going to stop with the Scream movies? But seriously, despite at times paralyzing us, fear often is the only thing that motivates us to act, spurring us into taking steps to crush its very source so that the struggle between our ghosts and our growth, as the most advanced animals on the planet, never stops. The fear of darkness was extinguished with the first fire; the fear of disease eradicated with the discovery of medicine and the fear of exams by the…oh wait, that’s still out here. Well you can’t beat ‘em all, can you? The conquest of fear is the ascent of the human race. As Franklin Roosevelt once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Oh, and the exams.

The Two Best American Comedies of 2006

2007-03-08T20:23:00.000+03:00

Amid such drek as is provided annually by the Wayan brothers or even mediocre fare like the broad frat pack comedy staple that we’ve come to expect from America, it is indeed rare to find films that are funny without being stupid and clever without being sappy. It’s the British who are known for their wry observational wit or subtle, languid examinations of comic detail in life. After all, The Office, without the usual laugh track and pretension towards any real story has become a benchmark for the nihilistic, post-millennial humour that Generation Y is characterised by and which older audiences find more congruent to their transitional entropy as they age. One might argue, of course, that Kubrick’s satire of cold war paranoia, Dr. Strangelove or the droll dementia of the brothers Coen are luminous examples of Uncle Sam’s respect for intelligent laughs but you know what…it’s been a good three years since the Coens made anything and Stanley is, well you know, dead.

But this past year, two films that really stood out for being smart and hilarious at the same time were Little Man and X-Men: The Last Stand…not. That was just to see if you were paying attention.

Jason Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking and Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s Little Miss Sunshine are in fact the two films that I refer to and if you haven’t been fortunate enough to catch them in a theatre near you, go hold your video rental guy/girl at gunpoint because you’ve missed something, you have.

I doubt you need me to tell you what a blithe, winsome film Sunshine is…the multiple Oscar nominations and Alan Arkin’s dark horse victory speak for themselves. But here’s the reason that despite countless and frankly by-now-hackneyed variations on the dysfunctional family syndrome in quirky independent films, Little Miss Sunshine stands out: it’s not about a dysfunctional family. It’s about dysfunctional people who work only as a family. The family unit is the cohesion and order that props them up and supports them to be the losers that they are with pride and joy. Because guess what, the only people who really give a damn about whether you’re falling or flying are the people to whom you’re bound by blood.

It says something about the film that Abigail Breslin’s seven year old would-be beauty queen, Olive, confides nervously to her grandpa that she wants to win the pageant because “Daddy doesn’t like losers”. Of course, Daddy (played by the reliable Greg Kinnear) isn’t exactly setting the bar very high, being a self-help guru whose ‘9 Steps to Success’ aren’t working for him at all. At one point, the audience is shocked when he tells his daughter to not eat ice cream unless she wants to become fat – what kind of horrible father does that? One could say that he did it to reveal the realities of life to her. I’ll go a step further: He did it to reveal the realities of his life to her. Having failed at something as quotidian as helping people, there’s not much hope for inner peace for him, at least for a while. So he channels the outer requirements of success, the superficial accessories like being thin and rich and pretty onto Olive, who’s about to enter that hallmark of shallowly anchored achievement – the beauty contest, beauty being the operative word. Natch.

Then there’s Steve Carell in the body of suicidal, uber-scholar and heartbroken homosexual, Olive’s Uncle Frank, ‘America’s No.1 Marcel Proust expert’…deadpan, doleful and just…darn good. He brings his bored, pop-Byronic act from The Office to the ensemble with great effect and it his arc from spurned statistic (on being told by his sister Sheryl that she’s glad he’s alive he says “That makes one of us”) to the protective uncle who springs up with great brio to defend his niece’s performance in the talent show, threatening murder, that really enlivens the film so much. The aforementioned sister, Sheryl, is of course the always charming, Toni Collette who plays put-upon mother, sister, wife and daughter-in-law and manages to not make her just another hassled female trying to keep it all together. Which is what her role essentially is.

Stand outs are of course Paul Dano, with his Nietzsche-phile, wannabe pilot, Dwayne, who refuses to speak until he makes the cut at flight school. Or until he finds out he’s disqualified from ever being one, whichever comes first. (His succinct reaction after nine months of utter silence? “FUUUUUUUUUCK!”); Alan Arkin’s potty-mouthed, super-horny, disillusioned Grandpa who coaches Olive for her the talent show (and to everyone who’s seen the movie – we all know how that turned out) is a revelation in his brash, brazen but still lovable vim. When Olive asks him if he thinks she’s pretty he answers that he totally thinks so and it’s not because she has brains and a personality. Yep. That Oscar was well-deserved. But the real surprise package here is little Abby Breslin who’s cute without being cloying because she doesn’t act cute. She should have won the Oscar for that last sequence alone and as the titular character, she really is the sunny, bright and slightly eccentric heart of the film.

For a film with almost no plot and contingent entirely on the characters and their depictions, Little Miss Sunshine is an odd, moving odyssey with knowing winks and laugh out loud moments – there is the irony of Olive’s co-participants, all 7-8 year old girls, being dolled up perversely to look like 30 year olds but performing chaste, safe little dance routines and songs whereas clueless, lovely Olive herself being the most outrageous of all – and in its poignant, non-preachy, comic realism it grasps lucidly the dynamics of the ties that bind all of us. We, as a species, can all be quite intolerable and inscrutable in our fetishes and quirks, but there are those who will tolerate and scrutinise us…our family. One line of dialogue alone sums up this humorous, highly entertaining slice of the cogs and wheels of how we loathe and love our families at the same time – “Everybody, pretend to be normal.” If only.

Personally, I felt that Thank You for Smoking was, despite all Sunshine’s splashy funniness, much cooler. Perhaps I’m partial to satire but this film had me in stitches. Christopher Buckley’s eponymous novel became an instant bestseller on its release in 1994 and has been adapted with excellent cinematic consciousness by Jason Reitman, who at 27 (when he made this) is preternaturally adept at this sort of thing…it’s a very precarious coign, brainy parody, and one teeters on the tip, knowing that it’ll either fall flat as being too intellectual and therefore lose the humour in the hubris or its appeal will be distributed so widely in the ‘8 to 80 target group’ that instead of telling the joke, it’ll be one. With this film, Reitman not so much hits the nail on the head but hammers it right in with a precision and debonair effortlessness (like he was whistling and talking on the phone while doing it) that is the trademark of its protagonist, Nick Naylor, tobacco lobbyist, father to a 12 year old boy and, according to audiences that comprise the weepy talk show circuit, the direct descendant of Satan. Of course, he’s doing it to…you know, pay the mortgage (the yuppie Nuremberg defence apparently).

As the wily, sexy and surprisingly self-aware spin doctor for the fictional Academy of Tobacco Studies, Aaron Eckhart is the movie. Here’s a guy who’ll tell you that nicotine intake and emphysema aren’t related and, wait for it…you’ll buy it. As professional bullshitter and suave shill, Nick Naylor cannot be beaten. Not even by the puritanical Senator with the unpronounceable name (William .H. Macy) who’s wrath he has incurred by making a career out of defending America’s right to smoke, come hell (which is where he’s been condemned by more than one person), high water, death threats, attempts on his life and er…lying journalists who sleep with him for a scoop (a surprising turn by Katie ‘Mrs. Tom Cruise’ Holmes). In one scene, at his son’s school, a little girl claims that her mother says smoking kills. His response is to infer that since her mother is neither a doctor nor a scientist, she doesn’t sound like much of an authority. Touché. When he’s not shooting down attacks by militant politicians, Nick shoots the breeze with his friends, alcohol spokeswoman Polly Bailey (the woefully underrated Maria Bello) and Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner), public relations expert for the gun industry. They are the M.O.D (Merchants Of Death) squad, presumably because it makes them sound that much rad. There’s a hilarious argument they have regarding what kills people more – fags, booze or bam bam – wherein they try to trump each other by quoting figures, like an auction…I kill 5 people; I kill 10; that’s it? I kill 20…and here’s the thing, despite all this, we never hate Nick. In spite of his being pretender to the throne of Hitler with the amount of people his product of choice manages to off, we can’t bring ourselves to abhor Nick. Not really, no.

Redemption comes in the form of his son, the creepily sophisticated kid who’s trying really, really hard to understand why the hell his father chose to make a living convincing people that cigarettes are alright. As with most screen interpretations of father/son rapport, the denouement relies heavily upon the child’s ability to save his father from his own shortcomings. To accept him and lead him towards the resolution of his incumbent problems. Here too, world-weary prepubescent, Joey (who accuses his mother of using him as a pawn in her subconscious revenge on her failed marriage to Nick and points out to Nick that he might have dependency issues – within an hour and a half of screen time) assumes responsibility for helping his overgrown child of a father to find himself and face up to his failures and duties. And manages.

The great thing about Thank You for Smoking is that it combines caricature of conservative hypocrisy surrounding any kind of vice, with a robust line-up of alternately pathetic and charming people. The argument is that everyone knows smoking is wrong and yet, well, the figures speak for themselves. Poking fun at the habit and the politico-corporate brouhaha surrounding it while remaining aloof from the trap of picking a side and ruining the fun (there’s not one cigarette smoked in the film), the movie stylishly swerves into many territories – wit, burlesque, dramedy and outright ha-ha funny – and just like Nick, wins us over with its cunning and charisma. This, then, packs a punch with biting but below-the-radar criticism; black comedy and heartfelt hilarity. Oh and Mr. Eckhart…thank YOU for being so smokin’.

The Bug

2007-01-22T12:07:00.000+03:00

Insects shall inherit the world.

Well, they might. I mean they have the strength of numbers; they could probably overrun the planet a few times over. Cockroaches have remained exactly the same since the days of the dinosaurs. The mighty lizards came and vanished but the refrigerator raiders…they’re still around. Just. The. Same. There’s something very creepy about these crawlies and it isn’t just the wriggly legs. While world domination might not be on their agenda for a couple of geological ages, insects have certainly become, through fear, loathing and reverence, abbreviations for the deepest, darkest and most terrifying recesses of the human heart.

There is a Freudian motive in all of us, the explosion of nocturnal, repugnant, pathetic and omnidextrous forces throttled inside our psyches. This motive, the unleashing of the monster, is so controlled, so tempered by culture and civilisation that we barely realise it even exists. And that’s just it. We are all insects. We just don’t know it yet. Or do we?

Very distinct is my recollection of the scene in The Idiot when Ippolit describes, in delirium, his dream. And what a dream, what a nightmare. The numbed horror of Ippolit, sedated by fever and desperation, becomes the ambiguous periscope through which the fog of unhappiness and revulsion is skewered. Indeed, the effect is very submarine, as if one, sitting in a deep, silent ocean, almost the locale of Ippolit’s spasmodic insanity, is struggling to understand the private and public psychologies and politics of the people in the novel, and more importantly, those outside.

The semiotics of the scene is charged with an intimate and shameful knowledge of despotism. And that too, by a minuscule insect. As a wasted Ippolit watches, the insect is hunted around the room by the dog, Norma before finally being manacled in her teeth and being gnashed into pieces. Despite this, the wretched creature survives.

Myshkin, the gentle, noble and beautiful protagonist of The Idiot becomes mired in the machinations and manipulations of the Russian upper classes and is, ultimately, swallowed up; his goodness lacerated by the depravity of those around him. Without that goodness, which is an integer for him, Myshkin is a pitiful, cannibalised tin man. That, of course, is part of the private intra-novel reflection of events.

In the secondary, more sinister, connotation, a funhouse mirror is set up to rarefy the power plays of the Russian aristocracy, represented by the insect, a miniature, black little thing scuttling around the ostentatious bedroom the dream Ippolit, the blue collar worker bee, finds himself in. Norma, of course, is the educated bourgeoisie, which tries so hard to rip apart this autocratic bunch of fat cats, but as hard as she might, she is unable to get rid of them completely. The insect denotes repugnance and hatred, for authority, for the system, for the weak schemers of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, and most of all, for the fanatic, the power hungry and the tenaciously greedy bastard within us all, who refuses to die or be wished away.

Even as one reads the scene, the mixed emotions of familiar realisation and self-loathing twinned with the perverse fascination of watching this ugly little beastie, so terrific, vile and elusive as it scurries around with such destructive purpose of both moral and physical nature. The wanton feeling of sadism, raging to hurt another just because; the puerile egocentricism, the attention that comes with being a hideous creature; and of course, the mad need to be invincible – the denial of those feelings is far more corrosive to the spirit than their acceptance. After all, an insect isn’t hated by other insects as it is by humans.

The pathology of the insect-human hybrid is, of course, best dissected in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa’s problem isn’t unique, even though it may appear so at first sight. A protean resonance of the evolutionary process perhaps, a residue left behind by the continuous cycles of change and transformation across millions of years, which becomes a psychosomatic locus for universal pain and pathos.

Claustrophobia, rejection, disgust, shame…who hasn’t experienced all of this? Whether on the receiving or giving end, the problems of humanity, while colossal – world hunger, poverty, disease etcetera – are also contagious, a phenomenon that both magnifies them to global proportions and also dwindles them down to very intense, concentrated personal experiences. There is such limitation in the condition of the insect – utterly alone, frugal, vagabond even…it is like living in a mobile bubble. Everything, every emotion, every little feeling is deepened, broadened, made much, much more harmful if it is focussed through that bubble…a result similar to the greenhouse effect.

Gregor Samsa inexplicably and suddenly becomes an insect; the story begins with his shocking degeneration but by the last page, no mention is made of him. Slowly, slyly he has been edited out of the story – he has decomposed, rotted into oblivion. He is no longer there. This other side of the insect is not so much despicable and abhorrent as pitiable and miserable, wretched if one will…this subversion of the insect syndrome becomes more meditative, more intellectual. There is a quiet, traumatic suicidal quality about the concept of this Byronic bug. As Gregor is distanced from and eventually disposed of by his family, the sorrow of the insect is cleared up.

A subliminal response to this disgustingly recognizable loser foments the legacy of the insect imprinted, if not in our genetic blueprint, then definitely in our spiritual one. The useless, purposeless, brainless assemblage of a head, a thorax and a tail (give or take a few legs) is consistent with some decomposing part of ourselves, as individuals and as a society. Some abyss where the most agonising, wounding and shattering projectiles of words or deeds or collective histories have been stored; a secret chute leading to that covert monster, like the minotaur in the labyrinth. Except the monster isn’t as grand, as impressive as the Minotaur…it’s a puny, disgraceful excuse for a living creature, a microbial fiend, thriving on the humid and black caves inside us. When transposed into the outside world, out of its habitat as it were, this manifestation of our inner maggot isn’t able to survive very well. The animate collation of the most deep-seated fears, hidden wounds, grotesque ideas and mutant fallacies undergoes a sort of sepsis – the real world, the shadow of which had permeated those spiritual caverns where the insect had lived hitherto, proves even more toxic in all its fury. The frail, dismal ‘monster’ of our minds is unable to wage much of a war against the true wickedness of the world. As in Metamorphosis, the insect dies. It cannot survive without the nourishment of our twilit interiors. And then comes the question – if it so horrid, do we want it to? And where? Inside, where it will gnaw away at us throughout our lives or outside where it will wreak havoc on our glass bubbles? The truth is we do not really have a choice, the insect will nestle inside us forever, and it is part of our humanity. We can only see it in the garish light of reality when some thinker surgically removes it and places it there in literature or art or film. That makes it scarier, yes, but it doesn’t make it go away. The genuine specimen is still inside us, the form is within us. Destruction of the external insect won’t make the one inside go away. Plato’s philosophy about the fatality of the outside and the eternality of the inside can be illustrated very well by the idea of the insect.

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is another grandstanding example of the ‘insect question’. An incisive look at the binary nature of man (and woman)’s crude desires and primal impulses, Dr. Brundle’s twisted Promethean revolution against the symbiotic order of man and machine yielded results that were just as twisted. The ‘normal’ facets of our wants and needs is so far removed from the mental base which anchors them that when, by artificial intervention, the cords haul those ghouls carpeting the inner layers of our mind are yanked forth, there is no way of sending them back. The insect, injected with so much that it feeds on, becomes huge and powerful and consumes the host. The parasite becomes the alter ego.

Unlike Kafka’s Samsa, this isn’t a meek, gloomy bug; it’s a full blown dreadful freak. The obvious Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde scenario in effect here is rendered all the more horrendous when one of the personas isn’t even human. Imbued with so much fascination for its protagonist, a brutal candour while visually and cerebrally holding us captive and making voyeurs out of us as the shocking realisation dawns on us that this is the biopic of every human being; The Fly is very much a forest.

Brundle’s manic ambition, immodest insistence on trying to change things, cruelty as he tortures his lover, Veronica and himself, as if uniting them in the heinous power/pleasure prowess he wields, of psychosexual control and demonic deliverance from those monastic edicts which he (and we, as a race) has been learning forever. Why is it so wrong, if one brandishes so much potency and might, to revel in it? Why does it hurt when it shouldn’t? The insect that has overtaken your heart, mind, body and soul should be numb to any feelings of guilt or shame. The dominance of culture in the end, of course, separates us from bugs, even if we somehow do evolve into nasty caricatures of those living inside us. Like Brundle, should we all become insects, we shall be tragic vermin on the edge of a nervous self-implosion, haunted by our ceaseless humanity, hormonal or historical.

I conclude neither as a cynic nor as an optimist. There is something savage and surreal about being an insect and, while we may find them filthy and nauseating on a regular basis, there is also something uneasily appealing about knowing what would happen if… Would we be despicable? Depressing? Diabolical? Perhaps neither…But let us not forget that, somewhere in the never-ending pockets of the human consciousness there lie sensations so eerie that even a gigantic roach wouldn’t come close to representing them.

Crime and Punishment: The Metapolitics of Dostoevsky

2007-01-11T16:56:00.000+03:00

St. Petersburg. Sometime in the 19th century. Dirty, grimy, confused, vibrant and pulsating with ideas. This description also fits the psyche of Rodya Raskolnikov as he makes his way through the hot, hungry and decaying streets of Russia’s intellectual heart. The very first time we’re introduced to him, an oppression and gloom is communicated to us – this young man we imagine striding through the slums is doomed. And more than us, he seems to be aware of it. The Zimmerman hat he wears becomes a cause of worry for him. After all, when you’re about to commit a murder, you don’t want something as insignificant as a hat to give you away.

Dostoevsky’s shockingly precise study of a killer’s diseased philosophy is steeped in a scathing critique of the plutocracy and smug conservatism of the elite, the powerful and shrewd despots who have manipulated the masses for centuries so unapologetically. The 19th century Europe suffers from this Western endemic of self-censure of originality, noble ideals and any moral ascent. The regimented ideology, homogenised perceptions and lifestyles and unquestioned acceptance of the supremacy of the System, all of which characterise stuffy political and cultural orthodoxy, are accused of driving true thinkers and sages to extremes of activity to counter the insularity of thought which stifles them so hypocritically. Dostoevsky launches a vilifying attack on the myopic and decaying pseudo-morality and socio-cultural ghetto of the times, accusing the superficial standards, set by an inane society, of pushing a true intellectual to the extent of crime to prove his aversion to the inertia which surrounds him. He blames the mass market beliefs embedded in the popular ethics of the time as a miniature version of the larger and more terrifying oppression of people occurring all over Europe and especially Russia as they struggled to liberate themselves from the constraints of ancient notions which had imprisoned them for so long. Education was slowly elucidating the masses; a point made succinctly in Raskolnikov’s being a student, one who has imbibed both the old dogmatic dictums and absorbs the new, feral wave of emancipation at the same time, freeing himself from the dictates of his era.

Like his other great works, The Idiot and The Possessed, Crime and Punishment is a robust and reactionary statement against the totalitarianism of the West and, in retrospect, a very slight but clever prognosis of the Russian Revolution, which was more strongly predicted in the other two books. This book seeks to focus on the fall of a single man, a metonym for the struggle of Russia’s emergent, young, working class fine minds. The pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna and her unwitting sister, Lizaveta, who is also killed by Raskolnikov, almost out of necessity than anything else since she walks in on his crime, are representatives of the petty and greedy class of blue collar society who sought simply to exploit those less fortunate than themselves for money. However, everyone accepts this behaviour as regular and normal. Raskolnikov’s motive for murder was complex but mostly he wished to express his vehement opposition to the existence of social vampires like them, whom nobody would miss or perhaps even remember the day after their deaths, so redundant and irrelevant were these wretched mercenaries. He considered himself almost releasing society from the hold of people like them, who, miserable and gluttonous, deserved to die such ignoble deaths, in his opinion. However, despite their inconsequence and ignominy, society deems it unfit for him to get rid of them – they’d rather be suppressed and violated than let go of their fake notions of goodness, none of which they themselves uphold in their own lives. Alyona Ivanovna and her meek, pitiful accomplice, Lizaveta, are responsible for the financial and spiritual massacre of so many people, their clients whereas Raskolnikov is only responsible for a single physical murder…which is worse? The slow, agonising slaughter of the spirit or the swift slaying of the butcher? Here Dostoevsky seems to be saying that poor or subjugated people, with their limited notions of human goodness and lack of ability to defend themselves from the onslaught of abuse, cling to the arcane, violent creeds designed to browbeat them; they adhere to the familiar doctrines which have been inherited through like hand-me-downs instead of breaking free and standing up for what is right. The murder is more a symbol for the feeble strikes against the old system which are hardly supported by the people in the interests of whom those strikes are made because they refuse to look beyond their narrow scope.

Both the dreams of Raskolnikov signify the pro-liberal stance of Dostoevsky, calling for revolution. The first one, in which the female ass is beaten to pulp by the cruel owner, depicts the situation of women in the 19th century through the modicum of Raskolnikov’s sister, Avdotya and later, girlfriend, Sonya. The ‘woman question’ is often alluded to in the book and in this case, Dunechka’s sacrifice for her brother by marrying a rich, thoroughly chauvinistic and devious businessman, Luzhin and Sonya’s sacrifice for her family by taking up prostitution – both examples of the hideous desecration of both the female spirit and the female body by individual men and the larger society – are encapsulated in the dream. The profligate Svidrigailov’s suicide at the end seems to forecast the advent of women’s emancipation, when the libertine propensities of men are no longer forgivable or tolerable even by themselves, as they drift towards a more progressive era.

In the second dream, the destruction of and havoc wreaked throughout the Western world are strikingly lucid prophecies of the overthrow of imperialism, the devastation of people and ideas and the militarization and cloning of them both. Long before Orwell’s Animal Farm, Dostoevsky spoke about the eventual assembly line mass production of thought and person, the denial of individuality and creativity and the collapse of society in the flames of a controlling regime. Anyone with the faintest knowledge of the last century’s Russian politics can testify to his accuracy.

The communist asphyxiation of Russia, which although it took root in the shape of a means to help the weak, morphed into an even more imposing and tyrannical structure of government and life, suffocating the proletariat and killing free expression, just like the 19th century aristocracy. In a sense, Raskolnikov connotes that in his bid to ‘liberate’ Alyona Ivanovna’s clients – he fights oppression with oppression, an educated man hacking an old woman to death – he adopts some of her brutality. The sophist mechanism of Marxism, which strove to liberate, ultimately succumbed to the corruption of power. Here also Dostoevsky strongly condemns left-conservatism and promotes liberal thought.

Raskolnikov argues that when Napoleon, who was responsible for carnage galore, was put up on a pedestal and glorified like a hero, despite the bloodbath he had caused all over the continent, why was he, who had gotten rid of only one woman who was as good as a criminal herself, being taken to task for his deed? His deep seated Napoleon complex haunts him repeatedly and his tortured despair and guilt leads him to spurts of charity, kindness and surprising goodwill, all of which shows his essence as an upright and good, moral man. It is his superior intellect and courage to question the norm, to defy the expectations of society which lead him to the heinous, but in his opinion, totally justifiable act of murder. He kills partly to convince himself of his own greatness – after all, if Napoleon could do it, why couldn’t he? – and partly to scandalise his milieu and awaken them to the grave injustices that they were inflicting upon themselves and upon each other. Once the crime has been committed, though, his conscience cannot stand the anguish of this knowledge, this awareness of having crossed all objective boundaries. On one level, he is offended at the mere thought of feeling sorry and is outraged that he should be expected to feel remorse; he is angry that he could not match up to Napoleon’s disaffection and righteousness when he killed, that he could not stick to his convictions. On the other hand, he is revolted and horrified by his own actions and many times contemplates giving himself over to the police. This duality of guilt – at oneself for being unable to abide by one’s beliefs and at the greater terror at what has been done by him – switches back and forth in the dystopia of Raskolnikov’s heart. Here, as well, is exposited the double standards of morality for those in power and those under it, a scathing review of the demagogue versus democracy.

In a sense, Razumikhin, the fierce, passionate and comic friend of Raskolnikov embodies the nascent generation of young thinkers just like Raskolnikov himself, thoroughly voluble and opinionated and willing to argue to death for his principles. But that is the very difference between them – Razumikhin might die to make a point but Raskolnikov would kill to do that. The martyr and the marauder…almost the same but not quite…a crafty observation of the overlapping of the two kinds of freedom fighters, one might say, the dichotomy of retaliation and which one is more effective in resisting force – words or weapons? Dostoevsky’s assessment is that it is all very well to talk, even with lofty intentions, but when one acts with those same lofty intentions in a manner seemingly contrary to the way of the world, are those lofty intentions undermined?

The Christian angle of redemption originating in endurance of pain is articulated by the pious Sonya, who urges Raskolnikov to his final road to penance. Despite her humiliation as a harlot, Sonya is an intensely religious and god fearing woman, pure and innocent despite her debauched physicality. Religion as a means to rescue oneself from perdition is emphasised very strongly by Dostoevsky, himself a devout Christian, and he reiterates its value by investing in Sonya messianic traits which enable her to save Raskolnikov in the end, through uncompromising love and constant prayer, both of which energise the recovery of the sick murderer and his salvation as he accepts his crime finally. His hero, Sonya, brings him to realise that society cannot punish him or excoriate him, only he himself could. The titular punishment, which begins and continues after the murder in the form of mental self-flagellation reaches a crescendo at the end, is carried to its conclusion by the holiness of Sonya and her love, and finally absolves Raskolnikov of his sins. In this sense, separation of religion and state are advised against because, finally, it is god by whom we are all governed and who decides our fates.

The mix of many characters that inundate the novel are all indicative of some symptom of the problems of humanity – the wily detective Porfiry who, re-establishing Sonya’s belief that only the criminal can truly declare a verdict unto himself doesn’t arrest him knowing he will, wracked with guilt, turn himself in; the Marmeladovs who live in abject woe and depravation; Lebezyatnikov who, although a pathetic little specimen of a poseur himself, elevates himself by saving Sonya from the money hungry Luzhin’s accusations; the bureaucracy which frames everyone within sight to uphold its own sense of duty and purpose and self-aggrandise and Nikolai Dememtiev who owns up to a murder he didn’t commit under severe religious pressure, again bringing to the fore the belief that it is god which inspires saviours.

Crime and Punishment is a searing dissection of the convoluted themes of sin, suffering, guilt and penitence, informed by the genius of perhaps the greatest modern novelist. It is so resplendent, so stark in its analysis that it almost splices open the mind, body and soul of a murderer. A seminal novel of timeless appeal, it is a book that didn’t just open my mind but wrenched it open with gripping gravity and honesty and awoke me from the languor of my existence to the other side of mankind.

How the media has been important in using the Right to Information in India

2007-01-08T19:29:00.000+03:00

The great investigative journalist I.F. Stone told journalism students that there were two words they should remember: governments lie.

Throughout history it has been observed that those in power have mercilessly exploited those without it, through the twin weapons of physical violence and psychological violations, the former having been easier to notice and therefore condemn. The conquest of the public psyche by fraudulent regimes, however, has been much more discreet but far more damaging than the bloodiest coup – through misinformation and propagation of ignorance, governments have oppressed, suppressed and fooled their public for centuries. By keeping them in the dark, they have cheated them out of the truth, which is vital for a democracy, civil liberty and the individual pursuit of happiness. After all, knowledge is strength.

On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution was ratified and for the first time ever, Indians were granted non-negotiable, fundamental rights to preserve their dignity and well-being. The most important among these was the omnipotent Right to Freedom of Expression, very lucidly defined in Article 19(1) (a) which bestowed hitherto unprecedented tools to the Indian citizen to speak out and ensure he or she was heard. However, expression is incomplete and almost impossible without being endorsed by information, facts and data, which would generate the ideas and opinions that are the integers of educated, articulate expression. The Right to Expression is useless without the Right to Information – how can one talk about anything without knowing anything? The Official Secrets Act of 1923, the judiciary’s Contempt of Court Act and the legislation’s Parliamentary Privilege provision have all proven militant to the interests of the Indian public in this regard and, catalysed by the jan sunwais of Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathana in Rajasthan, a law was passed on June 15, 2005, overriding them – the much vaunted Right to Information Act.

And here is where the all-powerful link between people and decision makers comes in – the media. Now that India has been bequeathed the instruments to defend its democratic values, the role of the media becomes all the more significant in sustaining this neoliberal wave of individual rights and personal justice which seeks to slowly but steadily subvert out government’s subtle hold over the social, economic and cultural currency of our people. Though we have always been a flourishing democracy, there has been a certain sense of secrecy, scepticism and distance from our administration – elements that go against the spirit of people power. Through red tape, bureaucratic black holes, rampant corruption, abuse of public trust, misappropriation of our funds and a general apathy towards and from the system which is hardwired in the average Indian, our government has not been the most ideal. And the media, despite being the fourth estate, has often either succoured these violators and criminals on top or have succumbed to the pressure that their patronage, which was essential to access files and records, exerted. Instead of being a vanguard of the people’s interests, the media sold out to become an accomplice of the wrongdoers – sophist and smug, they joined hands to keep India from asserting its independence in the complete sense to serve their own interests. The proliferation of incorrect information became commonplace, as a sort of placebo for the populace – for example, it’s a little known fact that literacy figures published in the past have often been exaggerated to make the government look good in the eyes of people.

Now that the Right to Information Act is firmly and effectively in place, however, there has been a marked conversion in the stance and style of the popular media. Like the common people, it too has revitalised itself to meet the needs of the enlightened, informed masses. Karl Deutsch called the media “a nerve of polity” and attributed the collapse of good, responsible national governance to the degeneration of this nexus between those who took decisions and for whom they were taken. For the robust, functional, largest-in-the-world democracy that is India, the media is now beginning to detach itself from the maelstrom of political activity and standing as the objective, impartial critic of events and persons. The recent media facilitated closure brought to the Jessica Lal murder case is testimony to the influence of the media in the fate of justice in this country. The media’s role encompasses the various facets of public and private life in a nation this diverse and vast in its geographic and psychological landscape. When more than a billion people live together in 3,287,590 sq. km. there are lots of issues that the press and electronic media must take up. The elimination of anti-socialist propaganda and activities in a welfare state is imperative – the problems of casteism, endogamous to India, as the question of affirmative action in medical colleges brought to the fore; sectarianism, evident in sporadic riots across the country; sexism, apparent in the many cases of gender discriminatory practices and dowry deaths and terrorism, vilifying certain ethnic groups and religions, undermining our status as a secular, egalitarian republic – these are all topical problems that are being surmounted by the RTI, whether in the form of pro-poor policies, details of investigations in cases of civil unrest, incidences of infringement of Equal Opportunity acts and extrapolation of governmental representation of events and people in its official documentation.

The revelation of the disgraceful pact between the Delhi Water Board and the Delhi Government to privatise water supply (which would raise the cost to extortionate levels and involve people paying to lay their own pipelines) in order to provide PricewaterhouseCoopers with tenders as directed by the World Bank; Ritu Sarin’s groundbreaking 2006 report on Rs. 47 crores of the rail budget being unaccounted for and the embezzlement of welfare funds for child labourers in Madhya Pradesh are all examples of the media taking up an issue for the benefit of the weaker segments of the population and standing up against selfish authoritarians.

The media seeks to disseminate knowledge about citizen’s rights and their intelligent usage; publicise grievances of even one individual nationwide and draw out its relevance; promote accountability of the government to the people; mitigate the imperviousness of the powers that be; bring about economic and social equity and most importantly, diminish the monopoly of the officialdom on information and imbibing the system with the transparency so invaluable for the success of a real democracy. It seeks not, as Chomsky said, to create manufactured consent in the best interests of the monolithic bureaucracy that has till now controlled our people, but to motivate dramatic change and revolution within us, to propel us to the loftiest paradigms of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.

In March 2001, the Press Council of India stated the RTI as being indispensable for the media in its quest for the truth – ‘The right to Information will encourage journalists and society at large to be more questioning about the state of affairs and will be powerful tool to check the unmitigated goings-on in the public realm and will also promoter accountability… The legislation when enacted will pose an antidote to vested interests which try to conceal or misinterpret information or which try to manipulate media directly or indirectly to plant misinformation. Through this legislation, transparency in public, professional, social and personal sphere can be achieved.’

And how true that is. The part that the media plays in the volatile, constantly fluctuating microcosm of dynamics between the people and the system cannot be discounted. It is medium, mediator and a metonym for the opinions of people within and without, all rolled into one. At its worst, it exploits and at its best it educates. The truth lies somewhere in between. The Right to Information Act is a boon, an answer to our lamentations and protests of dishonesty and vice, which the media must use to monitor authority and power.

In his brilliant graphic novel, V for Vendetta, Alan Moore’s prognosis of a totalitarian dystopia, his mysterious protagonist sums up my case for the media’s altered participation in a post-RTI India: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. The media must make that happen. After all, as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben sagely told him in the Spider-Man comics,
“With great power comes great responsibility.” The media has the power. It’s time it also showed responsibility.

2007-01-05T21:38:00.000+03:00

First off, seeing as I've had no posts in December I wanna wish everyone a very Happy New Year. One of my resolutions, considering my erratic blography, is to post more often, at least once a week. That way I get more stuff outta my system and you get to read more of said stuff. Which isn't necessarily what you want...but, hey, it's my resolution. Deal with it.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been a voracious reader. And by voracious, I mean that I didn’t stop reading when I was eating or answering the call of nature or even, sometimes, when walking. In fact, as a kid, I’d begin reading as soon as I awoke and keep at it till my head involuntarily plunked down on the pillows and sleep consumed me.

Then I’d dream about the book I’d been reading when I was awake. Repeat ad infinitum.

The bottom line is that as I write this, aged exactly 16 years, 8 months, 13 hours and 45 minutes, I’ve devoured tomes ranging from the good, the bad and the I-can’t-believe-I-read-this variety.

But hey, the whole point of aspiring to be an intellectual is to spout smug, effusive monologues about the root causes of the existentialist crisis (gee, boredom?) and how global interventionist policy sucks (except when it’s a country with…oil…?), in smoky ‘salons’ (cafes with fancy names) wearing berets (or the fez as a revolt against Western cultural stereotype) and scowls as we sip espressos (or not, depending on our take on fair trade). That, my friends, is the quintessence of the modern intellectual. A great deal of having spent childhood immersed in words, a bit of pretension and a dash of disaffected passion (hello…oxymoron? See that’s the ‘pretension’ bit).

So, to let myself go a bit and to cut everyone who’s tried sleeping through an incredibly boring book but later pretended to adore it, here’s a series called 'The Aint-ellectuals'.

Now first off, I thought I should begin with something close to my heart. I’ve often pondered over how, having read some good books and tried to understand them, I’ve had a few instances where the protagonists simply riveted me, not just by way of the story, but independently, as people, through their sex appeal and crush-ability. A very anti-intellectual statement to make, I’m sure you’ll agree. I mean, when was the last time Chomsky discussed how hot Robert Langdon was. Then again…never mind. Anyhoo, so here, for your reading pleasure are, in random order:

THE 10 SEXIEST MEN IN LITERATURE

1. Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov – Crime and Punishment

Move over Heathcliff.

The classic tortured anti-hero, here’s a guy who’s really handsome, frighteningly smart and quite unapologetically evil. Oh and a tad deranged. Of course, Dostoevsky’s greatness lay in slicing open the psyche of a murderer and, almost clinically, examining the structure and consciousness of both the act and the actor. The gripping study of guilt, sin and redemption is made all the more vital by its manifestation in the confused, dismal, hideous and often, pathetic, matrix of Rodya Raskolnikov’s intellectual cesspool. And uh, yeah, it didn’t hurt to read the 500+ page novel when said murderer is a 23 year old hottie.

2. Ronald Weasley – The Harry Potter series

I know, I know…seriously, Harry Potter? But I’ve gotta say that Ron Weasley’s wit and goofy charm had me at hello. Well, not literally but you get the idea. He may not be a great looker but the oh-so-British sense of humour, good-natured underdog-ness and tall, lanky visage don’t hurt his chances of scoring. He’s a great friend, a brave lad…and as Lavender Brown has proven…can snog right well.

3. Tomas – The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I read the book two years ago, so I’m really sorry if I don’t remember his last name being mentioned. I’m too lazy to look it up. What I do remember, of course, is that this was one doctor I wouldn’t mind going to. And I’m not sure if it’s because Daniel Day-Lewis played him in the movie. OK, so he isn’t so cool, and frankly, quite horny when he’s shagging two women at the same time but the fact remains that not only does he manage with the consent of both of them, (though not at the same time) but he makes the reader gawp, grin and blush while he’s cavorting his depraved self all over Europe as the Czech Republic goes to hell. The novel being set in the Eastern European invasion by Russia in the 60s, this guy sure manages to ‘make love, not war’.

4. Artemis Fowl II – The Artemis Fowl series

Hey, there’s no rule that says that two teen-fangirl-spawning series cannot be included in the same list. And anyway, rules, as I’ve always said, don’t mean anything for those who are determined to break them. As the precocious Mr. Fowl is. He’s young (very much so, in fact), incredibly intelligent (having the highest IQ in Europe, having written opuses attributed to Mozart) and a congenital criminal (he started a one-man interspecies crime syndicate which is a pain in the arse for humans, fairies and everything in between). He has the air of a highly sophisticated and meticulous man, like James Bond, and yet, a certain almost undetectable awkwardness, like when he’s interacting with Holly sometimes and of course, the weird proto-sexual tension he has going on with Minerva Paradizo. Of course, it’s enough that he’s my age and can control not just the PS2 but the whole damn world any time he wants. That’s power for you.

5. Bruce Wayne/Batman – The Batman series (duh)

When I said literature, I was being broad. And to all of you elitists who don’t read graphic novels (yeah that’s the correct term) ‘coz it’s ‘not really literature’, I’ve got news. But more on that later. Bruce Wayne is (a)sexy (b)like, really, really bright (c) has got cash like Saudi Arabia’s got oil (d)does not look like a royal Rodney when he dresses up like a bat and (e)has a very, very fancy car. He’s posh, he’s dark and he has the Batmobile. Reasons for not thinking he’s god’s gift to women are non-existent.

6. The Vicomte de Valmont – Dangerous Liaisons

Yeah, I am aware that more people have seen the film than read the book…and most of them have seen Cruel Intentions, which didn’t even begin to capture the essence of the intrigues and complexities of this lot. And yes, I’ll concede that John Malkovich isn’t your average historical rake (like Sean Bean is)…but let’s get to the point here. Screw the film. In the book, this dude comes off as a grrrrreat lover, downright wicked and a libertine of the highest order. Sure, he’s debauched and cruel and amoral, but at the end of the day, he’s a true 18th century Duke of Slut, who, reformed in his final moments, begs to let the woman he has fallen in love with, know that.

7. King Tirian of Narnia – The Last Battle from The Chronicles of Narnia

To people who have read the books: let’s not pretend you weren’t privy to the slow but steady romantic motifs scattered throughout the book whenever Tirian and Jill were talking. (Rest assured, I’m sure she was 16…which is legal in the UK). He’s young, royal, clever, gallant and presumably, quite dishy. Also, any guy who can manage to call a girl ‘sweetheart’ in the same page without coming off as an idiot has got to be good.

8. Prince Hektor of Troy – The Iliad

Oh, noble, valiant Hektor! Tamer of horses, scion of Troy and so righteous, so gentle. So dead. Well, that’s mainly because Achilles knew how where to stick the sword (oh gutter out, I meant really). The reason he isn’t on the list is simply because he was just hot, which even if you live your life like you’re in a L’Oreal commercial (am trying very hard to not think of the movie here) is a tad…boring. With Hektor, on the other hand, you’ve got the archetypal perfect man…affectionate older brother (to a nancy boy like Paris); devoted husband (probably the only character in the Iliad to NOT screw around while married); great dad and son; committed patriot etc. etc.…he’s the real deal. And if he really looked like Eric Bana, well, that’s just a bonus.

9. Mr. Darcy – Pride and Prejudice

Seriously? This one needs an explanation? I think not, dear reader (who has probably missed the 1995 miniseries and the 2005 film as well as the intense cultural obsession with this pin-up of Georgian literature). Loaded, hunky, a teensy bit hard to get, snappy dresser (hey, it’s the 18th century) and apparently, a damn fine dancer. Plus, he has that incomprehensibly charming trait of being a historical Brit, which is always a bona fide crush-onym. As long as he agrees to change his name (I CANNOT imagine myself or any girl I know cooing “Fitzwilliam” at any stage of the relationship), we’ll do just fine.

10. All the guys – One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love in the Time of Cholera might have been the love story of the century but let’s face it, as moving and elegiac as that book is, the real men (note I say men…otherwise Fermina Daza had a lot going for her) are really in Garcia Marquez’s other formidable tome…the one with a whole lotta people. See now, here’s the deal…I really can’t decide and frankly, it’s darn hard to keep up with the Jose Arcadios and the Aurelianos, so while I would personally opt for the last dude, who read Melquiades’ prescient history of his family and died while actually reading about his own death (brain aneurysm time), I kinda thought it unfair to leave the whole panoply of virile, varyingly bestowed men in the novel out in the cold. Like a studio picture, this ensemble has got one of each kind, as it were. Brooding, sensitive types; bad boy types; upright, kind types…take your pick. So for all the women out there, this book is THE book.

And with this, o readers, the first part of Aint-ellectuals comes to a close. Till next time, stay tuned. Ciao.

Cheers
~peace~

Altman No More

2006-11-24T12:34:00.000+03:00

Acclaimed filmmaker Robert Altman passed away on the 20th of November at the age of 81, in Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. Known for his maverick genius and the clever use of black comedy in his films, Altman made films like MASH, Nashville and The Player which, with their wit and wisdom, have held captive generations of cinephiles. For my generation, I think we know him best by Gosford Park and this summer's A Praire Home Companian. His ability to understand and dissect, with great artistic assurance and empathy, the dynamics among people and the nature of their spirits and voices made him one of those auteurs who had their finger firmly on the pulse of their audience. With his death, we have come to an end of an era in American cinema. We will miss him but more importantly, we will remember him for the great visionary and generous soul that he was.

In The Name of the Father

2006-11-23T15:24:00.000+03:00

This song is called 'You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart' and it's by the controversial Irish singer Sinead O'Connor; it was written by Bono of U2 though, and featured on the soundtrack of the 1993 film In The Name of the Father. Actually the film is one of the best British films I've ever seen and it's about the Guildford Pub Bombings in which Gerry Conlon and his father, Guiseppe were falsely implicated. It remains one of the most atrocious and heart breaking cases of justice denied in Irish history and the way it was brought to screen thanks to the amazing work done by Jim Sheridan (the director) and the actors, Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite and Emma Thompson is just remarkable. The music video alone is so powerful that it's obvious that the whole motion picture was terrific. Watch. Get rid of the R.E.M. song playing in the background though...scroll down to the very end and press the stop button on the silver control box. THEN press play on the video console otherwise the two songs will clash horribly.

High Marks Are Not A Sign Of Intelligence

2006-11-18T10:57:00.000+03:00

I’m sure all of us imagine what the future holds. What it will be like 50 or 100 years later. Sometimes a thought strikes me. When people meet each other, maybe their conversations will go something like this:

“Hi, I’m 70.”
“Oh hello, I’m 60”
“Nice to meet you, I’m 80”

No, they won’t be talking about their ages. They’ll be referring to the marks they scored in their exams. After all with the kind of education systems and emphasis on numbers that our culture is breeding, it’s a matter of time before our marks come to define who we are.

Numbers seem to be so convenient, whether they are in the form of statistics or cricket match scores. But are they really so definitive and so absolute as to spell out within two symbols the essence of who we are and what we have worked for? I beg to differ. I refuse to allow myself or indeed, my friends and colleagues, to be reduced to a couple of typed ink marks on a piece of paper.

American educationist Dorothy de Zouche once said, “If I can't give a child a better reason for studying than a grade on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay there.” Unfortunately, today, in our cynical, exhausted age where the rat race seems to have deluged everything that is good and pure about our thoughts and ideas, a report card is our ticket to the real world. A report card that may or may not even vaguely brush over the real people inside us. A report card that is a cardboard depiction of an institutionalised conspiracy to pigeonhole us into little numbered jars and force us into conforming to rigid, warped and frankly unnecessary notions of excellence and achievement. A report card that reports nothing but how much we can be manipulated by an obsolete system of learning into investing hours and hours at a study table, learning little but memorising the whole world, only to forget it all the moment the bell rings at the end of the exam.

Mark Twain’s famous quote, “I was born intelligent, education ruined me” comes to mind whenever this oft-discussed issue of marks and intelligence begins. However it isn’t education which is the problem. It’s the lack of it. The intellectual, moral and social development that it is ostensibly meant to provide is mainly absent from our current adaptations of formal schooling. The definition of education today has very much become about handing out a sort of homogenised, mass market form of instruction. It’s more like a McEducation really. And for this reason, the stress laid on marks has increased manifold. That’s the easiest gratuity the students can give to the institution. It’s like saying “One Math course and 25 history chapters…that’ll be 85% please.” There’s very little genuine effort to imbue the truest version of schooling in students. And it isn’t teachers or students who are at fault. It’s society as a whole, who’s urging this consumerist frenzy to just finish school, get a job and make money. Marks are the most readily available currency in this process, that’s all.

One must also bear in mind the debilitating effects of a mark-centric approach to intelligence. Intelligence is of various types and cannot be confined to academic achievement alone. Yale psychologist Robert J. Sternberg has proposed a Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences breaks intelligence down into at least eight different components: logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intra-personal and inter-personal intelligences. Daniel Goleman and several other researchers have developed the concept of emotional intelligence and claim it is at least as important as more traditional sorts of intelligence. There are parameters other than grades that determine the intellect of a person. Music, for instance, is a widely accepted confirmer of great mental prowess in a person. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart were all great composers who let’s face it, might not have made the cut at say, M.I.T. And can we really call Picasso or Van Gogh anything less than genii simply because they haven’t got a school report that says so? Again when one considers the many spheres of human proficiency and ability where marks are no indicators at all…literature, cinema, business, politics, drama…the list can go on and on. So why make such a big deal out of them, correlating them to intelligence when in fact, they symbolise one singular facet, that of academic skill. And while that certainly plays an important role in shaping our thought process to some extent, it cannot be the sole factor in deciding whether we are ‘intelligent’ or not.
Another point that needs to be made here is the decay of the personal passions of young people in their struggle to prove to universities, parents and society how capable they are. The compromise of private obsessions and spiritually satisfying pursuits for the sake of a few marks more than the other guy is, for lack of a better word, criminal. Einstein is a shining example of this. Brilliant at math and science, he kept failing other subjects at school and was unsuccessful at entering university at his first attempt. A girl who may love art and wish to devote as much time as possible to following in the footsteps of her idol, again maybe Picasso or Van Gogh, may be compelled to keep working her way through her thick Math textbook to get 90 instead of 85 in her exams. At the end of the day, the kid wants to go to art school, so why does knowing the formula for trigonometric ratios so vital?

Instead of allowing us time to develop and evolve as individuals with distinct opinions and generous ideas, by reading, listening, watching and learning we are imprisoned in classrooms, cramming the same equations over and over for reasons that have nothing to do with the joy of learning. We must return to everything that is virginal about our curiosity and eloquent about the magnanimity of genuine education and honestly, earnestly endeavour to learn. We mustn’t let our heart’s desires and aspirations become removed from our sincere willingness to imbibe philosophies and dictums of science and arts but must combine the two. This can come about only when we stop trying to measure ourselves through 3 hour question-answer sessions that we never cared about in the first place.

A frequently repeated side to this whole debate is that a person who scores 95 and one who scores 94 are more or less on equal cerebral planes, within the arena of scholarly merit. But that one extra mark might prove a deterrent for admission into university with the cut-off percentage increasing every year. Moreover it might have a deep psychological impact on the student who secured that one mark less that his/her opponent. He or she might have sacrificed all their pleasure and happiness in life for that one mark and it might indeed intensely affect the equilibrium of that person. This brings us to the potent issue of suicide rates among students. Quoting figures is hardly the premise of this argument. It is the mere fact that so many teenagers and young adults decide to take their lives just because they attained marks that they weren’t satisfied with which is so horrific. Putting our lives on a backburner to work hard for exams is bad enough without the added pressure and terror of everyone placing so much value on our marks that it seems our lives begin and end there. It is not the fear of getting an 86 or 87 which victimises students so much as the thought that everyone would think they were stupid if they didn’t score in a certain bracket.

It’s as if no matter how bright and interesting a young person is, scoring a 75% suddenly makes them ineffably moronic. Whereas a decidedly not very smart person scoring a 98% makes them intelligent? It could be that the 75%er is working on a book of poetry and thinks that attaining a reasonably decent percentage suffices in the large scheme of things. Her or his personal attributes and the power of her or his character convince them and in course of time, the world, what remarkable people they are. The 98%er who only notched that number up by staying up till 3 a.m. for one year and knows nothing of any subject beyond the textbooks that she has learnt by rote and no doubt highlighted in a triple colour scheme, might coast for a while on that percentage but eventually will end up schlepping papers around a stifling office. She may earn a lot of money maybe but she will live and die in obscurity, having contributed nothing to the world. A nameless, faceless, dispassionate and dull specimen of a slave to the system as opposed to the poet who has revitalised and revolutionised the way that perhaps a whole generation thinks.

Finally, I would like to point out that quantifying intellect is futile and even absurd. It is like trying to measure the time between two thoughts and devise a formula for falling in love. I repeat what I said before – a number is just that, a number. It can never replace a living, breathing, thinking and most of all, happy human being. And to that effect, our education structure should stop trying to substitute people for percentages. If it really has become about the marks then, to quote Pink Floyd,

“We don’t need no education; we don’t need no though control.”

Why ‘The Departed’ Should (But Won’t) Win Marty An Oscar

2006-11-17T22:59:00.000+03:00

Elevators scare me now. Well, they do since last evening.

The chilling effect they had in Martin Scorsese’s latest masterpiece The Departed might have something to do with it. After more than 10 years of period films (save the occasional Bringing Out The Dead), one of America’s most original and fearless auteurs returns to familiar territory, quite literally. A far cry from the opulent nobility of The Age of Innocence and the resplendence of old Hollywood in The Aviator, he returns to the familiar, dingy and stark streets – arteries that pump blood in and out of the sordid deeds of organised crime. This is Scorsese doing what he does best – analysing the murky underbelly of lives lived in the shadow of wrong and taking a voyeur’s delight in doing so. Freud with Panavision, or something like that.

Continuing a cinematic tradition essentially created by himself, Scorsese takes the exploration of ‘the fallen’ to a whole other level. Where Goodfellas convinced and then horrified a whole generation as it navigated from mythicised glamopolis to moral ghetto within hours, quietly carrying an ember of astonishment that blazed up later, Casino presaged the self-destruction of the empire – we’d seen it coming and when it did, our shock, fossilised from the outset, was overwhelmed by a feeling of bitterness and grief. Both these films, of which The Departed is a direct descendant, are eulogies.

In Goodfellas the longing for the charged, dangerous and powerful world on the other side of law is a strong undercurrent, culminating in the final scene which mirrors that of The Great Train Robbery – Henry Hill’s guilt at what he has done is outweighed by his commitment to the romanticised sins of his past, which he would repeat, given half the chance. He has not outgrown the fantasy, unlike the viewers, making the object in a sense, detached from the larger terror of his situation; it is only the spectator with the bird’s eye perspective who sees the extent of Hill’s moral paralysis. It zooms in on the characters and, effectively, allows their condition to magnify itself for us organically. In Scorsesian formulae, the character’s internality is inversely proportional to his or her outer surroundings.

In Casino the threat of collapse hangs like Damocles’ sword over the film and here too is nostalgia, a longing for things to go back to the way they were. Rothstein will forever be haunted by the deaths of Ginger and Santoro and wishes that events hadn’t unfolded in the way they did. His heartache, though, is of a different nature than Hill’s – he wants to rectify his errors and make different decisions perhaps, to alter the course of things so they wouldn’t have ended so badly. But again, even Rothstein’s demons are intensely concentrated and miniature – he doesn’t really regret his choice of career, for example. He just feels bad that his wife and best friend were killed because of it. It is again a situation that amplifies the mind of the characters while allowing everything else to come into slow but sharp focus in the background. And there’s another quality of Scorsese’s films that comes to the fore in Casino – the compression of the narrative; the terse, crisp pacing of the films’ stories captures with great impact its universe. They’re episodic almost to the point of actually being memories. Even with his grander projects like Kundun, Gangs or The Aviator, Martin Scorsese fills up the room, stacks it up with themes and ideas and little elements. Like a butcher, he fattens his films before feeding them to us in bite-sized pieces.

This tradition of composing profane elegies to expansive moral dystopias is continued in The Departed. Although a remake of the mind-blowing Hong Kong classic, Infernal Affairs, the film has Martin Scorsese written all over it. It combines some of the texture of both Goodfellas and Casino, a hybrid of the gradual grotesqueness of Goodfellas and doomed decadence of Casino. In The Departed there is the glitzy sheen of action movie volubility with two beautiful leads wielding guns and spouting fast dialogue combined with the brutal but quite obvious fatality of the whole affair. If Goodfellas was about the demystification of crime and Casino about its actual decay, The Departed is about the descent into the fascinating labyrinths that are the geography of crime and the eventual deadly consequences of that fall. Like I said before, ‘the fallen’ are what arouse most the curiosity of the director.

In literary terms, Goodfellas is a morbid limerick – starting off with a normal idea and then revealing the twist; Casino is a wistful ode – dedicated to a remembrance of things past; The Departed is a dirge – a funeral hymn all the way.

Now concentrating solely on this film, which stars Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Leonardo diCaprio, there is a lot to be said about the masterful way it has been put together. Just as a bit of an overview, Nicholson is the mob boss, Frank Costello; Damon his stooge/son figure who infiltrates the police, Colin Sullivan; Leonardo diCaprio, the cop who becomes a criminal, Billy Costigan; Martin Sheen is the avuncular Queenan who takes Costigan under his wing and Mark Wahlberg is the fiery, potty-mouthed Dignam who…well, knows how to ‘take it outside’ in the truest sense.

Beginning with the physique of the film, the use of light and colour, or lack of it, is interesting. Most of the film takes place in semi-darkness – Nicholson’s diabolical Frank Costello always remains in half-lit or even pitch black curtains of menace, almost dissolving into the dark background and becoming one with it. On the other hand Damon’s Colin Sullivan is often in rather verdant, radiant surroundings, right from his first appearance as a 14 year old in a diner where Costello after terrorising the owner, proceeds to buy Colin food and a comic book, as if establishing a sense of ownership, even paternity. Interestingly, the comic book is a copy of Wolverine, another character who has severe identity issues and who is also taken in by an older mentor, Professor Xavier, except in his case, he joins the side of ‘the good’ as it were. Its almost as if by placing the comic with the food, Costello introduces young Colin to his nemesis who is, in fact, so much like him and with whose life his very own existence will become intertwined. The food represents his life and Wolverine is the equivalent of Billy Costigan. Leonardo diCaprio, carrying forth the torch of De Niro as Scorsese’s muse, is the real hero, if anything like that can exist in this miserable place, as the tortured and righteous Billy. Like Costello, Billy’s filmic palette is very grim and gloomy – muddied blues, browns and blacks make up his world. He is an unhappy man, and it shows.

The iconography of the film also speaks volumes about its intent – organised crime versus organised religion. As is a trademark of Scorsese, the religious imagery is predominant. Even the title of the film is taken from a passage in the Bible. As begun in Mean Streets, the battle between gods and godfathers continues to rage and dominates a large area of what the film tries to say. Most prominent in Gangs and the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ which humanises Jesus to the extent of making him almost doubt his divine calling and revert to a ‘normal’ life, is Scorsese’s need to examine faith and loyalty. Here too the topics of guilt, betrayal, greed, belief and trust are discoursed upon. The Bible is a major influence in the works of Scorsese, perhaps because of his own Italian Catholic upbringing, and it shows in his diagnosis of the familiar traumas that afflict all his stories and the people which inhabit them. Jack Nicholson’s insult to the priest in the restaurant lays bare the way he treats his conscience. Within a milieu of godless assholes and spiritual dislocation, his protagonists endeavour to find peace and happiness – things that religion is supposed to provide one with – but they never truly wake their souls up. They know they are lost in some form or the other, be it the eternal divorce from love that Newland Archer comes to terms with in The Age of Innocence or the sacrifice of the diseased but vital human condition by Christ in Temptation. They struggle for a while to lead good lives but ultimately succumb into the black hole of their bad choices. There is a defeatist angle to the Christian hell/heaven question. The simple logic in all his films is: “Life is hell, sure, but I don’t even know if there is a heaven, so why bother?”

Then there is a very distinct use, in The Departed, of elevators. They seem to be a metaphor for the claustrophobia and horrifically easy trade of lives sliding over each other that form the core of the film. We’re all familiar with the oppressive and tense few moments in a crowded elevator, when the walls seem to close in on you, you’re afraid that the one in a million chance of it getting stuck halfway might just happen and you’re in such close proximity to the people standing next to you, you can almost hear their thoughts. The elevator is, it can be said, a microcosm of human drama and identity even. There are a number of totally unrelated and disparate individuals standing there for maybe a minute or two with their fears and problems weighing down on them, a sense of urgency to leave the unnatural atmosphere of the chute through which one is moving and all kinds of emotions heightened by the lack of space. And there is a sense of self encapsulated so unconsciously into those brief moments that you don’t even know it – your history, your future, what you had for dinner, an appointment with the dentist…in the suffocation of the elevator, these things are often pushed to the fore. And these are the very things that make us we. Our definitions are highlighted in the tightness of the elevator.

As has been said before, Scorsese works well in small spaces. By smothering his scenes, filling them up and compressing them, he accentuates the tyranny of the scenario with which his characters are being faced. The Departed basically takes place in a giant elevator which is hurtling with great speed towards a ground zero that everyone in the film has set base in. Sullivan and Costigan are two people who are standing together inside it, as each other. Before stepping into the elevator, they’ve exchanged lives, and now a potent, dangerous silence and humid pressure in a sense, of the walls closing in on them, remains. Costello could be inserted as the crazy lift-boy who decides when to start and stop and Queenan as the Good Samaritan who saw them step in with the crazy guy and wants to help. But ultimately the law and those who break it are all victims of the same ghosts. As Costello puts it, “When I was your age they used to say you could become cops or criminals. What I'm saying to you is this... When you’re facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?” Everybody is part of the dirty game, trying to pull off the same Machiavellian pyrotechnics, trying to get their job done, no matter how.

This insularity is responsible for rendering The Departed one of the most gripping films of the year. As the space makes it almost impossible for the story and thus, the characters to breathe, so does the time. In the warped continuum of the story, the clipped cuts back and forth between two parallel real time stories intensify the action. On a larger level it’s almost as if the film occurs inside a time capsule belonging to the ‘70s. The quality of the films is reminiscent of the Movie Brat era, of which Scorsese was a leading proponent and of which he seems to have preserved a great deal of in terms of spirit. There is no 21st century just-enough-for-it-to-appear-honest-to-our-target-demographic bullshit. These are real people with real fears and honest opinions about their lives and how to live them. Agreed, their situation might be unusual but then, given that kind of a state of affairs, we’d all behave in more or less the same way. Shouting matches, sex and haggles with departmental store owners all happen. Why? Because they happen anyway. The hyper-reality of the positions these characters are in does not devour the basic reality of their being in a place and time on earth. They are traceable dots on a four dimensional map, not twinkling lights in some distant galaxy.

Coming to some of the themes the film addresses, as has been said before, guilt, deceit, greed and sacrifice shape the template for all Scorsese films. Here too, they receive top billing. Of course there is the more adventurous good cop/bad cop dynamic at work here to incubate these ideas within its cinematic electricity. The film’s grammar spells out the polarity in this cat and mouse game and emphasises the nature of the volatile triptych that Costello, Sullivan and Costigan have unwittingly formed. A very grim neurosis permeates the film, criss-crossed by the need for redemption, self-destruction, confusion and what power can do to trust.

Sullivan’s guilt at what he’s doing to the police is assuaged by his success at what he does. Surprisingly, for a mobster, he makes a damn fine cop. But even he knows his true worth and as much as he fools everyone else, Sullivan cannot fool himself. He’s a rat from the gutter, albeit one with a shiny badge. He feels remorseful but not enough to let go of his inner monster. Costigan’s guilt is much more complex – he is amazed at his propensity for violence and doesn’t like very much the person he’s becoming, even if it is for a so-called ‘right’. Cheating on other people isn’t a job that the upright Billy, who wanted to become a cop to spite his family that had ties to the Irish mafia, takes naturally to, unlike Sullivan. He certainly doesn’t revel in it like Sullivan seems to. He’s almost disgusted with himself on certain occasions. Unlike Sullivan who ingratiates himself with everyone and pretends quite readily to be someone else, Costigan can never truly embrace this dank prison of conscience. Sullivan evades his guilt; Costigan wears it like a sock.

Even his first meeting with Costello is markedly different from that of Sullivan. Costello, at presumably the same diner where he met Sullivan, smashes almost to pulp the bandaged hand of Costigan in a perverse sort of initiation ritual. With Sullivan he’d nourished, with Costigan he was bent on destroying.

Conversely, with Queenan, the other father figure in the film, there is a reticence when he meets Sullivan. He mistrusts him and it’s apparent. He refuses again and again to divulge his mole in the mob to Sullivan, even though his dislike or discomfiture is pointedly different from Costello’s malevolent display. His invitation to dinner to Costigan on the night he comes home, however, is surprisingly similar to Costello’s buying of food for Sullivan in the beginning, confirming their equivalent positions in the scheme of things. Queenan’s kindness is unconditional – it is a product of genuine concern for a protégé; Costello’s show of magnanimity is nothing but a bribe to entice a boy to his side.

Deceit of course is the key feature of the film. The film is so engrossed in the examination of this idea that at some point, everyone’s cheating on someone else. When Costigan unknowingly falls for Sullivan’s girlfriend, Madolyn, he repeatedly reminds himself of the fact that she’s with someone else and although he is quite passionately crazy about her, he resists for a very long time; in fact it is Madolyn who makes the move. Costigan is the guy she would have fallen for anyway in a sense. Since Sullivan has stolen his identity, in a warped way Costigan is her true love in any case. Yet, it is still unfaithfulness but of a naïve nature. Much more malicious is the deception of both the police and of Costello by Sullivan. He wants to straddle both worlds by fooling both simultaneously. Sullivan is a pathological conman it would appear – he tricks as a matter of character. He tricks the police into believing he’s an honest cop; he tricks Costello into placing so much faith in him and then using that to bring about his downfall; he tricks Madolyn into sharing her life with him and he tricks Costigan into a transaction of lives. Sullivan’s trickery is quite spontaneous in that while he doesn’t necessarily plan it out, he knows how to spin a web of lies. Even his verbal glibness on his first date with Madolyn reflects that manipulation of the truth to suit his purpose (“What makes you think I want to see you again?”). Comparing this with Costigan’s honest exposure of his feelings to Madolyn even though he’s obviously attracted to her – he storms out of a therapy session when she doesn’t seem to pay attention – it wouldn’t take much to figure out who’s the more sincere of the two. And it is Costigan whom Madolyn eventually loses her heart to.

There is the deadly sin of gluttony which is spoken about here. Again Sullivan wants it all – a respectable life, the allegiance of the mob, a proper family etcetera etcetera…he doesn’t lose much sleep over the means he uses to get those things. In that respect he is very much like Costello. Greedy. Billy on the other hand has a very Spartan, minimalist approach to life and indeed, the job. A broken family and shattered childhood later, all he wants is justice and peace. Towards the end too, he repeats to Sullivan that he just wants his life back. Nothing more, nothing less. He does things according to his potential – as Dignam says, his 1400 SAT score make him a rocket scientist, not a cop – but he could care less about the material profits that garners. It’s all part of the job. He is frugal in his manners, even speaking far less than Sullivan. Costigan is almost a monk forced into the cynical and dying world of which he wants no part, in sharp contrast to the pauper who wants to be the prince in the case of Sullivan.

Sacrifice is also an underlying concept in the film. Queenan’s sacrifice for Costigan; Costigan’s sacrifice for his job; Madolyn’s sacrifice for Sullivan; even Dignam’s sacrifice for his beliefs all become pivotal points in the stories motion. The film teeters on these points and resumes walking only when someone has given up something they hold dear. Costello and Sullivan too in a sense put their lives on the line for one another, even if ultimately their motives are selfish. Costello even tells Sullivan at one point that if he doesn’t catch the mole that the police know has been planted among them (little realising it is Sullivan himself) then the only one who suffers will be Sullivan for failing to do his work i.e. turning himself in. That is of course the right thing to do but of course, Sullivan will never do it. He has sacrificed, in effect, his morality for Costello’s sake.

Power’s mutilation of loyalty is a very interesting assessment the film makes. Slowly Sullivan wants to reject his roots and become a ‘good man’ even though he isn’t one at all. As he gains power of his own, he wishes to throw away the dominance of Costello and become a success on his own. Costigan on the other hand tests loyalty again and again as he loses and gains power periodically within his personal dynamics with everybody else. As the cop pretending to be a gangster, he has no power except that vested in him by the Boston Police; as the second-in-command of Costello, he has dollops of it. So the way his faithfulness is scarred by this fluctuation of authority becomes vital in understanding Billy Costigan – a man clinging to himself while becoming someone else. His allegiance to his own soul is a metaphor for his acceptance of power. As he slips away from himself, he achieves power and as he remains close to who he is, he loses it. With Sullivan it’s the complete opposite. His closeness to his real, repulsive self, his loyalty to Costello, spells the end of any supremacy he might wield. He must dupe his past to build his future.

Redemption and the accessory self-destruction are played out in many ways throughout the film. Sullivan wants a superficial sort of redemption, one that will allow him to forget his dirty past and live happily ever after. He’s driving himself to insanity doing it but get there he will. Costigan wants to live. Period. For him it’s about salvation. Queenan’s physical and metaphorical fall to death from the building jolts him into the realisation of his pathos. He wants this nightmare to end. He’s losing his sense of safety and self. He mentally berates himself over and over for the mess he led Queenan into. Costello of course has long since crossed that barrier, he really does not give two hoots. Sullivan even laughs and asks him about his supposed paternal affection for him when Costello, knowing he’s about to die, wants some kind of twisted reassurance of hope and forgiveness. He wants Sullivan to not kill him and also, in a bizarre way, show that he loves him. That’s his redemption of sorts. But it doesn’t come about.

These and many other facets of the weird but enthralling masterpiece that Scorsese has spun out in the form of a striking dramatic cobweb make The Departed so eloquent, so pungent and finally, so satisfying. Ultimately, Costigan, Sullivan and Costello are all victimised by their own choices and idiocies. What they do and why they do it are immaterial to them…these acts are compulsions. They must be done. The broken landscapes of Costigan, Sullivan and Costello seem to reflect what the psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”

Come Oscar night, one can probably expect the by-now familiar image of our Marty sitting there, nervous, as the camera pans onto him and then, share his momentary disappointment when the envelope opens and his name isn’t announced for the seventh time. The Academy hasn’t ever rewarded his fervour and genius, whether he made small, brutally beautiful films or lush, Hollywood studio pictures. Yet he continues to make great cinema. After all, ‘what a man can be, he must be’.

The 10 Commandments of Watching a Movie with the Folks

2006-10-17T20:06:00.001+03:00

Scene. Saturday night. Or if you live in a Muslim country, Thursday night. It’s been a long week; you’ve just wrapped up homework and finished with your tests. Time to unwind. And what could be a better way to do this than to watch a movie. Fine, there are tons of better ways to utilise your time like solving world hunger and finding a cure for cancer but work with me ok? Just as you pop in the DVD and the bowl of corn (geddit, geddit? Pop in the movie and popcorn), the metallic gnarl and click of the key turning in the lock shatters the calm and in barges your mother with the grocery and/or your father with the evening newspaper. (DISCLAIMER: This statement in no way reiterates the conventional gender roles in a double parent household and the parents' baggage can be switched according to the sensibility of the reader). And there goes the movie. Because you totally cannot watch it with the ‘rents. Can you?

1.Thou shalt not pretend to watch a “kid’s” movie to please your parents. Now exactly what constitutes one is open to debate but I’m guessing Village of the Damned ain’t one of them. Be honest. Don’t cheat. It doesn’t look nice when that ‘animated’ film turns out to be Sin City.

2.Thou shalt abide by the rating system whenever possible. The point being, films are classified for a reason. Don’t watch NC-17 if you’re not 17. Gladiator was R-rated but that was only because people below the age of 13 were probably going to die of boredom at some stage. If your parents are over 50, chances are they’ll be snoring through the second fight scene. Except your mum, who might stay awake a little while longer because Russell Crowe looks nice in a skirt. Quick, hide all the phones now.

3.Thou shalt not laugh, smile or show any emotions at all if a joke about sex is cracked. Pretend not to get it, act dumb or just keep eating the popcorn. If your parents laugh, do NOT laugh with them…that's exactly what they want, it’s a cunning ploy to get you to snigger at something you’re not supposed to know about till you’re older (which might mean 50 in some cultures but really, you’ll always be there baby so don’t ruin it).

4.Thou shalt get up and go to the washroom/get some more popcorn/change into your pyjamas/sign up for military service whenever you sense a ‘lurve scene’ looming. We teenagers, world-weary and street smart as we are, know exactly when the two main leads are going to get it on. Disappear before this happens. If you don’t, you will spend the next few minutes pretending to disappear, which isn’t nearly as effective. Think of it as helping your parents. Be a good kid.

5.Thou shalt not relinquish the remote control to either parent under the worst kind of torture. It’s your film. You rented it. Sure, they paid for it at some level of your microeconomic setup but essentially, you went down to Blockbuster, you braved the funny looks everyone gave you when you asked for Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang at the only volume that video store clerks can hear, you waited till the oily haired schmo, who thinks he’s gonna sell his script for a million dollars and become the next Tarantino, punched in the name of the film you wanted FIVE times before he got the spelling right and it was you, dear reader who walked all the way from the mean streets of your town to get home with the DVD safely tucked away, braving muggers and video piracy cops. Ipso facto, the film is yours. Remember, she who has the remote, has the power. The parent will invariably sit on the remote at some point and the screen will go blank so you’ll have to restart or they’ll jab some button that’ll have everyone in the film speaking in Tagalog or they’ll try and increase the volume and will instead increase the brightness, making it impossible to make out what’s happening in the blinding glare. Then they’ll look sheepish while you cringe. Cue row. Avoid it. Keep the remote control with you at all times.

6.Thou shalt not mention the cast at any time unless it’s a movie made in prehistoric times i.e. an era with which the folks are familiar. Phrases like Keira Knightley or Jake Gyllenhaal might be hard for your parents to understand. That would make them feel inadequate, which is not something we want. Stick to the stuff they know.

7.Thou shalt not make any comments about the film’s storyline during the actual watching of the film. Do you know how annoying it is? “Yeah she’s the one who was in…”, “No, you’re confusing her with…”, “Hey isn’t he supposed to be the bad guy?”…”Ooh, they’re gonna blow it up aren’t they?” Watch. The. Movie.

8.Conversely, if your parents are the kind who discuss the plot threadbare and state the most obvious facts while watching the film, thou shalt feign temporary deafness or, better yet, make the remote control conspicuous. That’ll show them who’s in charge. Clear your throat if this doesn’t work. In a last ditch attempt, jump on the couch and proclaim undying love for the guy/girl on screen. Who am I kidding? This won’t work but do it anyway for kicks. It worked for certain people who shall remain unnamed. *Cough* Tom Cruise *Cough*. Your parents definitely won’t talk about the film after this.

9.Thou shalt never, ever acknowledge that anything on screen even remotely resembles anything in your own life. If you do, you shall be subjected to low budget indie movies about dysfunctional families for the rest of your life. Don’t nod your head or exchange glances with your parents at any time during a film, even if it’s Jurassic Park 3…they’ll derive a metatextual post-modernist theory about how dinosaurs attacking humans is a way of demonising the older generation for the younger one. Parents are strange creatures, as much as we love them. Refrain from eye contact.

10.Thou shalt earnesly avoid watching anything but PG fare and foreign films with your old man and old lady. PG stands for Parental Guidance. Means your parents have got to “guide” you. R stands for restricted. Means you’re barred from watching it with them. No, seriously, save the American Pie movies for the sleepovers. Watch obscure foreign films by people with exotic sounding names like Ozu and Truffaut (basically anything hard to pronounce…er…except Paul Veerhoven. He made Basic Instinct). That’ll convince your parents you’re a patron of the arts and have a sense of high culture. In this case you can also ignore Commandment 3 because in arty movies ‘getting’ the jokes will make you look smarter in front of your parents. Score the brownies!

Well, I suppose this is it for the moment. If I remember anything else the next time I’m watching a movie with my old man and old lady, I’ll take mental notes to enlighten you with, dear reader. After all, everything I do, is in the interests of the youth. Hehehe.

I hope to see you soon.

Till then ciao.

~Peace out, rock on~

Why it's called 'a crush'

2006-10-03T20:05:00.000+03:00

I hate getting over crushes. It's so frustrating to see a person everyday, walk past them, say 'hi' to them maybe and know that inside, you're screaming out of pure, unalderated helplessness at that person's a)ignorance of what you feel for them b)ignorance of you in general or c)undying love for someone else. Sigh. I loathe adolescence. I mean it's bad enough that Christian Bale doesn't know I exist...does life have to be cruel enough to deprive me of true lurve even among fellow mortals? They say wisdom comes with growing up but at this point it just seems like this endless tunnel of confusion and trying to find one's bearings in the huge tide of emotional and hormonal change taking place within and without. Infatuation, especially unrequited, can really bring you to tears (the fake kind) if it goes on too long.

You're walking down the (wherever it is you normally walk), it's a happy, sunny day, everything's going your way, your homework's complete, all your jokes till now have been funny and Whatserface in Computer Science just told you that you're looking nice today. You're traipsing along, chipper and dandy, your head held high, cap jaunty and looking important when BAM outta nowhere they emerge. The ones who've been making you feel stupid all along, the ones you want very much to talk to but don't have the guts to, the ones you want to be noticed by but also want to run in the opposite direction upon seeing, yelling blue murder.

Your crush. And you inch closer to them.

If you're with a friend, you suddenly become engrossed in relating to them that very funny episode yesterday on Scrubs (my heart is racing) in which J.D. and the Janitor (Earth..rip open and swallow me now) have this really amusing conversation (am I sweating?) where the Janitor tells JD that he needs a nickname (is s/he gone? Dear God, I hate/love you) and he....(phew, drop the act and brave the smirk of friend who will, by now, have figured it out).

If you're by yourself, you desperately look for places which and people who can camouflage you. Oh crap, there s/he comes, they haven't seen me yet...look down...no, too suspicious...look up... too desperate for attention...look to the side...ohmygod is that the guy's/girl's loo? (depending on your gender)...shit, here they come...and here they go without noticing me for the millionth time. Bummer.

Suddenly, the world is a lot less sunny and you're feeling a whole lot less peachy. That spring in your step is lost and your day has been symptomised by the inability of love and unfairness of life in general. Whoopa? Hey stop shoving, I would've almost fell...oh it's you again...

"Hi" you squeak as they reward you with the all powerful grin, rakish or coy, sweet or sexy.

"Hi, wassup?".

I think I'll faint. Your brain is in overdrive, not least because of the surge of adrenaline that rushes up to it. Think of something, think of something you idiot. Say something smart and witty...something that'll make 'em remember you more than they do...anything... just say it. Open your darn mouth and let words come out.

Beat.

"I...uh...nothingmuchIjustgottacompletethisassignmentsoIguesswe'lltalklater."

Smile. Whip around. Run.

Translation: "Looking at you reminds me of how repressed and inadequate I am and since you're just stopping by to be polite to me, I'll put you out of your agony by departing super-fast. This is also in the interests of self-preservation as talking to you depresses me thoroughly...I know I have no chance in hell of scoring with you and I must end the torture. I know I'm speaking really fast and probably in a very shrill voice but at this point, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN."

Ah, the tribulations of being 16.

And so the cycle continues.

Till next time then.

~Peace~

Putting the 'prime' back into primetime

2006-10-02T08:16:00.000+03:00

Having been driven to insanity by the insipidity of TV these days, I decided to pen a little something to vent my frustration.

Television is terrorism. That’s right. Television is terrorism of the worst kind – cultural terrorism…in fact one could even say that television is responsible for the warped brand of stagnant, anti-intellectual, everyone’s-a-winner ideology that typifies our current social environment. One could go one step further. Television breeds idiots.

To make such a strong statement surely implies that I have thought a great deal about the kind of schlock that pervades our homes and infiltrates our lives on a daily basis, more militant than perhaps any army or government. To switch on the telly means to be drawn into a world of melodramatic, mind-numbingly appalling soap operas, in English, Hindi, Malayalam or any other language under the sun or to be subjected to hours of people climbing rocks to see who wins the jackpot at the end or of course, the endless rounds of talent shows that seem to guarantee that some confused, naïve teenager from some remote hamlet, who probably has no idea what he or she is doing up here will, in no time at all be catapulted into some stratosphere of stardom where only Obi-Wan Kenobi can hear them. Take your pick.

The intrigues and deceits of some really, really loaded family become fodder for mass consumption. Instead of building a nation where art is valued above all; where intelligent, thought-provoking issues and ideas are expounded upon and where bright, earnest conversations about literature and science occur, we end up with who killed who and who came back to life in the fifth episode of some serial. The supermarket crowd cannot be allowed to remain so…they must be elevated to the level of appreciating the gift of great art, not the other way round – with all of us dumbing down our sensibilities for the lowest common denominator. It’s the same with talent shows – homogenized, manufactured pseudo-ability, packaged as genius of the highest kind and then, through clever marketing by making the audience believe that they chose the shrill voice from the radio, disturbing their morning, they sell the idea that everyone’s participating in making everyone a success. This whole national-talent-building exercise is rendered hollow by the whole sequence of events, endorsing ratings over real skill and awarding points for who’s most popular rather than who’s most gifted. High school anyone? Plus, most of the people who win just got lucky.

And reality shows? What’s ironic is that nobody wants to actually deal with people on a real basis…at least, the kind of people who accelerate the TRP ratings of these reality TV shows certainly have no connection with the real world. They’d rather revel in the pain and tears of some guy on TV who’s just lost a million bucks to the other fellow because he couldn’t run fast enough, than comfort their best friend who might have done badly in a test. So it’s best to experience and understand human emotions through an artificial medium which you can switch off when things get too uncomfortable. Unlike reality.

Edward Murrow, one of the great TV journalists of all time, once talked about television’s dichotomous abilities to insulate or enlighten, to open your eyes to the facts and fullness of the world around you, or to bore you to sleep with sheer stupidity. To paraphrase him, without the efforts of people who make and people who watch television to refine it to a form of art, to melt the self-obsession ensconcing our MTV generation and lift us up to a stratum of great cerebral advancement, as a global society, without the efforts of people who will do all this, TV is just a plastic box of wires and light.

Myoo-nik

2006-03-30T11:25:00.001+03:00

I've just visited the long-missed multiplex with my dad and seen Munich. Now, I live in the Middle East and the film is quite a controversial one for the region but surprisingly, it was still released. Guess the censors hated War of the Worlds so much that they decided to sit this one out. So there was just about five people in the whole cinema. Yes, the WHOLE cinema. It was a pretty good film and quite unlike the usual Spielbergian cool/fun-schlock that we so love...the only special effect here was Daniel "Blond Bond" Craig's contrived South African accent that he gave up halfway through. Still he was pretty enough for me not to mind. Speaking of pretty, I am seeing Eric Bana in a whole new light now. I think I'll get myself one of those contraptions from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and erase all memories of The Hulk quick. Quick question: Have you noticed how ALL the names of his characters of late have been ending with 'er' or 'or'...you know that sound - Bruce BannER, HectOR, AvnER, HeevER (that's his upcoming flick opposite Drew Barrymore, Lucky You).

Also, there was a very strange, surreal and vehement (for lack of a better word) sex scene between Mr. Bana's character, Avner and his wife, Daphna (played by acclaimed actress Ayelet Zurer). Mr. Spielberg hardly ever incorporates sex scenes in his films so when he used this, it was actually very essential. It showed how Avner, after being utterly psychologically damaged and mentally battered, having had to kill so many people at such close range and with such minute strategic detail, was exhausted, paranoid and lost. In trying to find solace and comfort in his home - his wife, as he made love to her, Mr. Spielberg showed the massacre actually taking place. Throughout the film it is through Avner's reveries and thoughts that the sequence of events leading upto the killing of the athletes is unfurled for the viewer and in this final window unto the crime through Avner's demented soul, the effect is brilliant as they intercut between Avner's wild, passionate and violent need to connect with his wife, even if on a physical level, and the fearful, terrorising events which culminated in the gunning down of the nine athletes. In the ultimate moment when he climaxes, that's the moment we see the bullets being spewed onto the horrified sportsmen. It was quite an awesome piece of film-making.

I thought the direction was slick and deft and the ensemble cast was very good. I mean seriously, I know the people in Crash were good and all, but would you rather see a bunch of people whining on about racism and venting their ethnic prejudices on celluloid or a goup of people tracking down the perpetrators of one of the biggest political crimes in the last fifty years? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. And just so you know, Geoffrey Rush as usual, is swell and Eric Bana very adroitly heads the cast. If Keira Knightley (!?!) could get an Oscar nomination I think Mr. Bana was robbed! 'Nuf said.

Ciao

Godspeed

~Peace out, rock on~

11 Things I Know About Rom-Coms

2006-03-17T00:49:00.002+03:00

I have a bone to pick with Rom-Coms (the nomenclature of all things commercial seems to be totally congruent to the kind of people it's meant for). What's with the romantic plus comedy thingamajig? I mean, either it's a romance or it's a comedy. Choose one. A romance can be inclusive of light, humourous moments with one-liners and wit. A comedy can have a romance running all through it. I know for a fact that Meg Ryan would probably have been out of a job eons ago if the existence of the 'rom-com' had been proved redundant and god forbid we ever have to sit through another actors-who-would-never-be-seen-dead-together-trying-to-believably-make-it-in-what-can-only-be-described-as-mind-numbing-drek-the-studio-hopes-to-rake-in-cash-with-at-the-expense-of-your-intelligence-dear-viewer trailer (longest hyphen rant EVER). Oh the cliches...oh the non-plots...oh the agony of forced (supposedly funny)dialogue...oh the obviously absent sexual tension (John 'Malkovich' Malkovich and Andie 'Check out my L'Oreal hair' MacDowell? )...it's too much for a poor Saturday evening cinema-goer to take in. So dear reader, behold my wisdom when I say to you.

Standard plot and character stereotypes include:

1. Too Stupid To Live (TSTL) types (mostly heroines) who go about in their self-consciously cute and allegedly endearing but actually annoying, ditzy way doing things that the average human female will plead insanity for, if ever caught doing.

2. Still in the TSTL zone, these are 'smart', 'career-oriented' women (hint: notice the inverted commas) and are all consumed by their work until The One comes along when suddenly all work ceases to exist, they go traipsing around with Lover Boy and surprisingly never get fired.

3. No matter how obviously pretty and attractive (Jennifer Lopez, sexy...NO! Reeeeally!?!), they'll never have been in proper or worthwhile relationships before (with guys who are right-off-the-bat jerks), have most likely never realised how beautiful they are until voila the hero comes along and she smacks her head ("Well, I never") all of a sudden, and miraculously sees her true worth (whatever that is).

4. The heroes are either horribly rich playboys (see Grant, Hugh) or just horrible (seemingly until the heroine cracks the tough exterior and uncovers Fabio within) .

5. The heroine will conveniently remain oblivious of the same chemistry and attraction that the viewer is supposed to be privy from their first scene together.

6. There will be a cynical, smart-talking, maternal best friend of the heroine, similarly unlucky in love but never quite as desirable so as to make only the heroine worthy of romantic attention in the eyes of the hero. Oh, and a sexually repressed, shallow, ex-jock sort of best friend of the hero. These two might also get together with each other in certain cases, as a secondary plot. As in right next to the PRIMARY (the main or just not there) one, that is.

7. The heroine will have way too many responsibilities like a younger sibling(s)/nephew(s) and neice(s) or older relatives to look after whom the hero, even though the heroine detests him (or does she, giggle, wink), manages to charm and floor and who are sure there's something afoot between Niceguy McHunk and Ihate Menreally (get it, get it, ha ha).

8. The kiss only takes place at the end.

9. Alternative to Rule # 8, they shag around in the beginning of the third act and there's a Huge Misunderstanding that requires the remaining half an hour to sort itself out.

10. Rich Bitches/Jealous Ex-boyfriends or girlfriends/Evil Bosses/Gay best friends as ONLY male pals of the heroine/Ethnic Minority All of the Above - at least one of these is sure to crop up in the course of the movie.

11. Apropos Huge Misunderstanding, it ultimately takes only (I've timed so I know, yes, I have nothing better to do, no I'm not a closet Rom-Com writer) 5 minutes to solve, but the rigmarole surrounding the two leads meeting up to solve it takes forever, ends with an "I love you too (baby)" and lasts 15 minutes. Yes, I did say 5, so the remaining 10 minutes are divided between snogging/shagging and a glimpse of their Happily Ever After with other cardboard fixtures...er...I mean characters in the movie set to a popular pop-rock love song.

So that's it then.
Phew...till next time then, you lot.

Ciao
Godspeed
~Peace out, rock on~

She

2006-03-13T20:09:00.000+03:00

Hi, I had to write this article for a newspaper for Women's Day a couple of days ago, so I thought I'd load it onto my blog so that y'all can have fun sniggering at it. He he.

Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel…the list goes on. We’ve all read these classics, unfortunately. That’s right, unfortunately, because their depiction of women is at the very least, demeaning and while this is forgivable in light of the ideology of the time they were written in, it certainly isn’t any more. These so-called fairy stories prepare a patriarchal mindset in a whole generation of people from the very outset, and the trend, once begun, never stops. The emphasis on the beauty of the princess or woman or whoever the female protagonist is, as if that is all that matters in a woman; the need for a man, be it prince or woodsman, to rescue her as if she is incapable of doing so herself; the wicked witch (rarely wizard) indicating distinct misogyny on the part of the storytellers…notice a pattern? It’s all very well to excuse these tales for being what they are owing to their having been created in a less enlightened era but have things really changed all that much? After all, we continue telling our daughters these stories at bedtime.

From Cleopatra to Evita, Boudica of Britain to Razia of the Delhi Sultanate, women are not exactly strangers to government and politics. After all, in ancient Egypt, matrilineal primogeniture has been speculated to have been a possibility; in Rome, Agrippina exercised a good deal of influence and power over the weak, cowardly Nero and, as written about in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharat, ancient Hindu queens fought battles – Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, a martyr of the Indian Mutiny, is a more recent example of a female military leader. Closer to our times, the suffragettes, who went so far as to chain themselves outside the parliament buildings, paved the way for gender equality in the political arena, beginning with suffrage for women in New Zealand in 1893. Surprisingly, the East, which has always been projected as hostile to women and their rights, produced the first female leader of a country in the form of Srimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka. Later Argentina’s Isabel Peron, India’s Indira Gandhi and UK’s Margaret Thatcher continued the global legacy of women as administrators, a role which till now they had not been thought capable of.

The 20th century has given the world highly capable female leaders and soon almost every country will have had one. It is interesting to note that in 2005 alone, Liberia, Finland, Chile, Germany, Sao Tome and Jamaica were some of the countries that elected women presidents over male candidates, proof that the world’s collective consciousness is changing. More men than women vote every year, so if they elect a woman to be their president or prime minister it bodes well for future prospects for women. Rosa Parks, who changed America simply by sitting still in a bus; Lakshmi Sehgal who flew for Bose’s National Army during India’s independence struggle and many other nameless, faceless women who have sacrificed their lives for causes, often unremembered simply because they were women. In Bahrain itself, women voted freely in the first parliamentary election back in the ‘70s and in the recent municipal elections, they were granted franchise and encouraged to stand as candidates and vote. Indeed, when women did not win seats, the King himself selected competent and bright women to represent them. Bahrain’s health minister, Dr. Nada Haffad is the first woman minister in the Arab world. In 1840, at the World Anti-slavery Convention in London, women were disallowed from participating in the proceedings. In 2006, more than 70 women have, over the last century, held positions of power in government and politics. We have certainly come a long way.

In Virginia Woolf’s seminal feminist essay A Room of One’s Own she illustrates cultural oppression of women by a hypothesis – if Shakespeare had had a sister just as talented as he was but without access to education and the kind of cerebral stimulation her brother was allowed to expose himself to, she died, young, wasted and a degenerate in the streets of London, hoping till the last that she would be given the same chances the Bard was. Then, Woolf embarks upon a brilliant treatise on the needs of the female intellectual, most importantly, the titular room where she might sit, think and create. It’s appalling to realize that up until the mid 20th century women weren’t really permitted to do any of these things; as long as they could cook, clean and take care of the kids, it didn’t matter whether they could hold their own on the writings of Sartre – they were undoubtedly the vague, indefinable Other…like a throng of children with their noses pressed to the glass pane of a candy shop while a whole lot of other kids guzzle and gobble the sweets uncaringly. Jane Austen, hardly famous in her own time; the Bronte sisters, forced to publish under male pseudonyms; Mary Shelley, the creator of the legendary monster of Frankenstein, whose husband tortured himself, unable to come to terms with a wife more successful than he. There were a few names that cropped up – Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emily Dickinson…and this only in the West. Oriental female scholars were practically unheard of, excepting the ancient Hindu priestesses who philosophized in the Upanishads. It was only with the advent of Woolf, de Beauvoir, Greer and some others in the last century that women emerged as serious writers. Of course, today, Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy, Margaret Atwood…the list is endless. Art with Georgia O’Keefe, Amrita Shergill and Mary Cassat; science with Kalpana Chawla, Marie Curie and the many female Nobel Laureates; music with Yo Yo Ma, M.S. Subbalakshmi, heck even, Sheryl Crowe; female actors and dancers who have enriched the history of entertainment through the centuries, back when they were disreputable professions till today, when they are being showered with Oscars and rushing to enroll in ballet schools to become the next Fontaine or Pavlova... all of these artistic and creative pursuits which were denied to women have become all the better because of their contributions.

However, beauty pageants still package women as objects with the veneer of ‘beauty with brains’; Playboy magazine and fairness creams still do roaring business; sexual discrimination at work least of all in the form of lesser paychecks is rampant; women are still being killed because of their insufficient dowry or because they dare do what men feel entitled to do, be it choosing a profession or indulging in promiscuity or because they challenge the system that stifles them…these are stark, sad realities even today. It begins right from ‘pink for girls and blue for boys’; ‘Barbies for Tina and cricket bats for Tommy’. It’s time we stopped this subliminal bias that we unwittingly inculcate in our kids. Young women today don’t need Prince Charming to save them from their problems; they don’t need to be pretty if they can be smart and most of them can follow a soccer match just as well as their boyfriends and brothers…get over it.