A Generation Apologizes

If you were born between 1977 and 1981, I count you as a member of my notional generation. You fit into a scheme of my own device, unsupported by any scientific theory or sociological research, that suggests that you belong to a little wormhole in space and time that defies the 'Generation X' tag, or whatever else it is that the pundits would have it called. I'm talking about my generation.

Aside from the not particularly unique hope that we die before we get old, what defines us? Let us agree to shun the noxious labels that have been earned by our brothers in pink shirts and waxed chests. Much has been made of the alleged fixation on clothes, accessories, and video games. Yet I would argue that text messaging and social networking are only the most superficial manifestations of this mini-generation's identity.

One hears a lament for the death of the man's man, the guy's guy, the beer-drinking, sweat-dripping Hercules that changes flat tyres with one hand and pinches bottoms with the other. Indeed, there is an entire series of videos on YouTube dedicated to essential skills sorely lacking in the Man of Today -- ranging from basic mechanical skills to everyday tasks like ironing shirts. And that, I think, strikes closer to the heart of the matter. Speaking for the men, I don't think it's testosterone that's in short supply. It's simply usefulness.

Consider.

We can't fashion mailboxes out of wood like our fathers used to. We can't attack the doorbell with a screwdriver and put the circuits right. We can't fix the car engine in pouring rain and we sure as hell can't do our accounts without some assistance from the Silver-Haired Ones.

We are soft.

That's right. Don't reel from the shock of reading in print the secret that you have nursed in your bosom these many years and that is now out in the open, gushing obscenely like a stormy gutter.

We are soft.

Oh, to be sure, the flagbearers still compete athletically and still lust after a nice set of wheels the same way they lust after a nice set of something else and boys will be boys and blah de blah de blah, but no, really.

Those annoying thirty-somethings that you despise for their so-yesterday tastes and their fondness for Nirula's food? They're tougher than you. Not as tough as the generation before them, to be sure, but a far sight tougher than you. And me.

Sure, I can handle my mobile phone's dictionary feature with the dexterity of a concert pianist, but can I tighten that leaky faucet with a wrench so that it drips no more? Well, maybe, but I think I'll just call the plumber.

The Internet has made everyone an expert on everything, so now we don't need to cram our brains full of a lot of useless information. Wikipedia is a click away, and if you want to know about the renovation of the Carpenter Gothic Bardsdale Methodist Episcopal Church in California in 1982 [from Wikipedia's newest articles], just Google it, n00b. (Or click on the links in the previous sentence.)

Everyone's a Jack-of-all-trades and so telling someone they don't know Jack probably doesn't carry the same level of venom it would have before the Information Revolution.

All this, mind you, is independent of how ripped you are and how many friends you have on MySpace or Facebook or Orkut.

So you have 23" biceps and 248,973 blonde buddies and buddettes on your friend list.

Big Fat Hairy Deal.

The WC in the guest room keeps flushing. Could ya fix it for me?

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this generation grew up soft-boiled. We didn't want to, I promise. We'd like to slave over the radiator and then come back and wipe our grease-soiled hands with a grease-soiled rag and then wipe the sweat off our grease-soiled brows before settling down to a working man's lunch too. It's just that we'd like to be sure that there's soap and running water handy before we get to the actual radiator.

And a soft towel too, please?

The Leather Jacket and the Ingenue, Part II

In the seven months that have passed since my last post, I've done a lot of thinking. I've taken to wondering whether the leather jacket and the ingenue and the ingenue draped in the leather jacket are new to cricket, or whether they've been on the scene since leather first met willow.

Would Dr. Grace have been susceptible to the charms of a fair maiden in a corset, or would he have retreated home faithfully to Agnes in the aftermath of his six-dozenth century? This much at least is known: William Lambert of Surrey, MCC and Sussex was banned for life after allegations of match-fixing surfaced against him. The year? 1817.

Nearly 200 years later, the matter of Lambert's guilt or innocence is still debated. Was he a fall guy that fell victim to a witch-hunt, or did vice get the better of him? Did a few gold sovereigns change hand or was it the price of a bespoke suit? Were there a few missing frames in the video footage made available to the Third Umpires of Lord's, or was the man simply out of nick?

Then, as now, silver-haired gentlemen mourned for a vanished past where the sun shone on the idyllic greens of Hambledon and the players competed for no grander prize than a mug of ale after the battle of bat and ball. The blacksmith opened the bowling, and the innkeeper took guard at the Marsh End, while the village ducks would keep score noisily in the pond just behind. And the sun, of course, never set over merry old England and Empire.

But since our old days (which are always the best days) are the days we are eking out now, we must attempt to romanticize the present. We must be unanimous on some basic points, chiefly that there will never again be a batsman as silky as VVS Laxman, never a bowler as wily as Mendis, and never a fielder as athletic as Gibbs.

And nor will the game ever be played with the same fairness of spirit and gentlemanliness of conduct as in the present day.

In our time, the players played only for...no, wait, we won't be able to say that.

To be sure, the money's there for the taking, and long may today's cricketers enjoy it. Yesterday's cricketers fool no one when they weep blood over the rot that money has brought in and the corresponding greed displayed by today's me-first youngsters. Cricket mirrors the economic growth visible in India and the cricket commonwealth as a whole. In the 1980s, you had to save up for your Maruti 800 and cricketers wore close-fitting jerseys that always looked one size too small for them. In the new millennium, EMI spells shiny new car, not a music company that made the LPs your Dad bought in college. The cricketers actually wear jerseys that fit too.

The world over, there seems to be a wave of resentment when any sportsman runs towards the sign of the dollar. Hoarse shouts of 'traitor' and 'money-grabber' are to be heard, and yet, how is the sportsman any different from any young professional changing jobs to make some extra bucks a month? (One speaks here purely of endorsements and team-switching, not match-fixing, which is on parallel with industrial espionage.)

It is time for the fan to make his peace with the concept of a professional sportsman and to stop humming the national anthem or club song to an accompaniment of falling tears whenever Joe Batswell takes the crease or Tom Wattabowler sends the middle stump flying. See the man for what he is, a professional at work, and then ask yourself if you jump and down and cheer loudly every time your colleagues in Client Servicing manage to successfully staple two sheets of paper together.

I know I do.

The Leather Jacket and the Ingenue, Part I

Cricket in India has never been distinct from showbiz. While their Western counterparts have largely been content to bed members of the general public, Indian cricketers have usually displayed a marked preference for starlets. And really, it's not that hard to see why. Both professions impose an itinerant lifestyle, both involve adulation and a distinct lack of privacy, and both see the transaction of huge sums of cash that are out of the reach of the common man.

Before cricket and Bollywood became big business, they were easy pickings for the dons of Dubai. The general explosion in interest, revenue, advertising and all-pervasive media coverage had yet to reach the fever-pitch of the 2000s. Money and fame were present and accounted for, but the cricketer and the actress had yet to see themselves put up for consumption on a news channel's BREAKING NEWS ticker. The OB (outside broadcast) vans were yet to break land speed records in order to reach a tinsel town wedding. The television anchors were yet to scream themselves into apoplexy.

And so, fixing and blackmail emanated from the Emirates, the fear of one fatal bullet manifesting itself in either BOLLYWOOD STAR NITES or the promise of easy cash to cricketers who had still not broken the bank at Abu Dhabi. Come 2000, and the lid on the obscenity of match-fixing was wrenched open with a scream that resonated across the world.

The ICC created an Anti-Corruption Unit. The BCCI and PCB banned players for life. Former captains cried on national television and men in leather jackets looked about them nervously. Effigies began to burn. TRPs began to rise. And India obeyed Bond villain Elliot Carver's prescient command of only three years before: "Let the mayhem begin."

The era of media saturation had begun, and soon Mayawati and the Narmada Dam were to find themselves edged out by Aishwarya's wedding and Dhoni's broken heart. As the lines between entertainment and reporting blurred, virtual sets began to dominate, headlines were replaced by couplets, and hardened journalists gave way to performing clowns in business attire.

The ticker became the harbinger of hope and doom as "India have won the toss and are batting" became the nation's rallying call. Underwear ads jostled for airtime with spots for chewing tobacco while any cricketer or actor imprudent enough to leave his or her house found the shadows of a thousand video cameras blotting out the sun.

Money began to flow, ushering in a new era summed up, appropriately enough, by a Bollywood number:

Cash To Da Left Of Me

Cash To Da Right Of Me

Cash To Da The Front Of Me

Cash To The Back Of Me

Cash Is The Day For Me

Cash Is The Nite For Me

Cash On My Mind Making Money All Da Time

The fun had begun.

But there was more to come.

Wow, that even rhymed. These news channels must be getting to me.

A Shot In The Dark

There's a new trend in Hollywood. Dark. Black. Not-so-nice. Shades of grey yanked over to the maximum distance from white. In other words, complex characters that aren't all good, haven't quite attained the minimum qualification required to become an Eagle Scout, and who, quite possibly, choose to go commando.

Strike Batman out of that list. The commando bit, that is. Like most of his caped compadrés, old Batty chooses to wear his briefs on the outside. I guess that happens when you see your folks rubbed out in front of your eyes and then fall into a well that happens to be populated by flying rats with pig noses.

That apart, Batty began the dark trend, unless one goes back to the original badass from the dark side, Darth Vader. Before Hayden Christensen ruined an iconic character for a generation of filmgoers, Vader was the ultimate anti-hero: a man transformed by his own failings and by circumstance into an evildoing minion for a greater villain. Not bad deep down inside that (dark) suit of his, just bad on the surface, destroying the odd planet here and there. Ultimately, his love for his son brought him back to the Light Side (White Side? Right Side?), albeit at the cause of personal destruction.

Nevertheless, credit for the recent renaissance of the Dark hero must go to Messers Nolan, Goyer and Bale (director, scriptwriter and lead actor) of the rebooted Batman franchise. Their combined reimagining of the Dark Knight in Batman Begins (there's that word again!) brought in gazillions of dollars at the box office and set the stage for a wave of darkness, not to mention prequels. 2006's Casino Royale saw James Bond return to his roots as envisioned by creator Ian Fleming -- a paid assassin with little love for his profession and even less for double entendres. Even the boy wizard Harry Potter could not escape the trend trap -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix both ratcheted up the gloom and disfavoured levity.

Everywhere you look you will see black, grey, and deep shades of midnight blue. Even the studio logos at the beginning of these films now have hues of doom washing over them. Warner Brothers seems to have patented the grey/deathly green shade for its opening logos.

How cool is 'dark' right now? Pretty. Jessica Alba, the curvaceous starlet at the heart of the Fantastic Four franchise, had obviously been briefed by 20th Century Fox's PR Department when she said in an interview that the second installment was 'darker' than the first. If anything, FF4 is notable in the Marvel universe for the lack of problems faced by its titular quartet. There are no complexities in this relationship, no inner demons, no major sources of heartache (apart from the physical appearance of the Thing, an appropriate name for a walking skin rash).

Is darkness now a prerequisite? Sure, we would all like to see fictional characters made to seem three-dimensional, but does one really go to see a superhero flick for the frowns or the FX? Excruciation or explosions? Bullet-dodging or boo-hoo?

Perhaps both. Last year's Superman Returns, while far from 'dark', erred on the side of emotion by giving us a 2 1/2-hour superhero love story. Notable perhaps only for a sequence where a would-be thief shoots a bullet into Superman's eye and sees it fall flattened to the ground, the movie confused tedium for depth and did not deliver the goods to effect-expectant fans.

The two FF4 films, on the other hand, sought to make a virtue of levity, jettisoning depth of character for general tomfoolery while still clumsily attempting to convey a message in each part. (First -- people are more than just skin-deep; hence blind girl falls in love with the Thing. Second -- even superheroes need to settle down; so Johnny Storm looks for a serious relationship with a cute army captain.)

And actually, Batman and Bond did strike the right notes when they opted for dark, but then, darkness is in their very blueprints. Harry Potter is an orphan and a misfit whose friends die turn by turn. (Superman is an orphan too, but perhaps the cheery nature of his costume renders him impervious to 'darkness'.) Spider-Man tried to do nasty in his third cinematic avatar, but only managed to conjure up visions of bad 80s bands with his mascara.

Now, as long as no one tries to do a dark version of Garfield...

Return Of The Prodigal Son

I'm back.

It's been a year and more since I last peeped out of the closet in which I hide. In that time, the world changed, my world changed, and the sameness of existence evolved infinitesimally as it always does.

I was last here in 2005, and it's now 2007.

To those who wanted to know where I was, here I am.

The Prodigal Son has returned. Won't you ask him to sit down?

Haiku

"You only live twice:
Once when you're born,
And once when you look death in the face."

-- James Bond's failed attempt at writing haiku, in Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice

PAGE 3 piffle

Earlier this year, I made the sad mistake of watching a film called 'Page 3'. I compounded my error by spending money on tickets and seeing it in a theatre and was crucified for the above sins by being forced to see it from the front row. I wrote a review of this film shortly after having watched it at PVR Saket, New Delhi, reproduced below for the benefit of anyone contemplating the film's purchase on VCD/DVD.

PAGE 3 reviewed

You know what the problem with Bollywood is?

The interval. An arbitrary insertion of a fifteen-minute break just as things are getting interesting so that people don’t have to hold back the dam any more and so that the snack counter stays in business.

What it basically boils down to is that every film that comes out of Bombay is actually two different films soldered together so that the exhibitor has one feature-length product to market.

First the setup, then the denouement. As in any other film in any other language, you say?

Except that in Bollywood, the first half is the hook. The part with all the fun, the flesh, the music, and the have-a-good-time-you-did-pay-the-price-of-admission feel to it.

Then comes the dramatic incident that is underscored by gongs and/or kettledrums in the background as the screen goes black and INTERMISSION appears on screen. (It seems INTERVAL isn’t a serious enough word.)

And then, in the second half, all mirth and mazaa disappear. Characters experience internal conflicts, flex their thespian muscles, and either redeem themselves or are destroyed.

Which brings us to PAGE 3. A simplistic examination of modern-day mores and manners, the reality and evils of tinsel town (shocking!), and the ugliness that lurks beneath the skin of Bombay’s Beautiful People.

PAGE 3 comes to you from the creative mind of Madhur Bhandarkar, the man who yanked away the curtains that hid the bump-and-grind of CHANDNI BAR.

PAGE 3 is a ludicrous take on modern day mores, manners and the superficiality that constitutes life in Tinsel Town. In lieu of strong characters, director Madhur Bhandarkar resorts to bland stereotypes that make inane conversation with each other over the course of the film’s two-and-a-half hours. To wit: Delhi’s well-known cross-dressing hairdresser Sylvie is reincarnated as a grotesque fashion designer who whines about being denied the use of the ladies’ room in Ladakh; veteran theatre artist Dolly Thakore does a salt-and-pepper coiffured Shobhaa De; and various other high-society types appear as themselves or something like it.

The film is almost pornographic in its monotonous repetition of party scenes, pulsing dance numbers and cutaways of a bemused-looking Konkona Sen Sharma.

Desperately phobic about people who speak English and girls who stay out late at night, the film manifests its disapproval through vapid teenagers who call a rampaging cop a ghati – to which he responds by stunning them into silence with the revelation that he graduated in English literature! Then follows a lecture on how one should first be Indian, then try and be Western (with a helpful “Hmmm?” for effect).

Since it’s 2005, Nirupa Roy’s ghost is exorcized by the casting of Soni Razdan in the role of long-suffering mother. Razdan agonizes over how she can’t control her daughter – it seems the little terror comes home late and even – gasp! – stays over at a friend’s place sometimes. Cue a shushing by her too-busy-having-sex-with-ten-year-olds-to-care-about-you-and-your-problems husband Nassar Abdulla (who used to make a decent living endorsing Archies Cards and Ceat Tyres in the Innocent Eighties), accompanied by sad music to manipulate you into feeling sorry for her.

The scenes at the rave party where the drug bust takes place are almost surreal in their lack of authenticity – mindless youths throb mindlessly in time to the mindless rhythms that are playing as they mindlessly consume drugs. (Ah, so any time somebody takes drugs, their immediate response is to flutter their eyelids like a pharaoh rising from the dead and look like you were once an extra on HARE RAMA HARE KRISHNA.)

Technical incompetence joins the party too, just for fun. Abominable lip synching combines with atrocious dubbing, even for the actors who’ve done their own voices.

The film also has a quasi-philosophical theme song to move things along, any time the assistant forgot to deliver the day’s shooting script. No, thankfully the words “Page Three” are missing from its lyrics…it just features Lata Mangeshkar crooning “Kitne ajeeb rishte hain yahan pe” and can usually be heard anytime there’s a nubile young starlet being seduced or when the earnest Konkona is pondering her place in the universe.

Other stereotypes/clichés present and accounted for: bearded, khadi-clad Hindi journalist; solid, honest, denim-wearing crusader-scribe; transition from miniskirt to salwar-kameez on change of heart; ‘liberated girl’ smokes and is a Christian to boot; green journalist and female Konkona is shown the path of righteousness and truth by plain-talking but kind male Atul Kulkarni; when a boy and a girl have sex, it’s always because the boy forced the issue; foreigners are funny animals, usually evil, mercifully not called ‘Mr. John’ in this film; the rich are monsters while the poor are good, wholesome people; make-up men are gay and could even steal your boyfriend; and much, much more.

Some points to Boman Irani, an actor this critic otherwise dislikes. Subtle and believable portrayal of an editor, no attempts at speech-making or justification for his actions. The look and feel of a newspaper office is accurate, too…but all of these are small mercies, and in the final analysis, too small.

Like most Hindi films, this one talks down to its audience – it tells you who the bad people are, who the good ones are, and even supplies a glossary becaue you, like the director, are an outsider. (Helpful tip: swapping means adla-badli.)

What Bhandarkar doesn’t know is that the best satires are made by insiders looking out, not by outsiders looking in. When Bosco the driver is boasting to his fellow chauffeurs, you get the feeling that’s lil’ Madhur there, still trying desperately to get in on the action and sneak a peek…just for a sec, mister, honest?

The ‘bold theme, poor execution’ genre has overstayed its welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Give us some real movies, please.

This is humbly yours truly. 

Indian Zoetrope

A SHORT HISTORY OF WORLD CINEMA

In the beginning, there was the zoetrope...

Then came the kinetoscope...

And then came cinemascope...

Of course, along the way, a lot of people made movies.

And the world created and destroyed itself a thousand times over.

Now we have blogs.

Hooray.