The Prestidigitator

Incredibly disturbing but relevant piece by Johann Hari.

And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. “When I see Western journalists criticise us – don’t you realise you’re shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn’t oil, it’s hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We’re very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don’t have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn’t gloat at our demise. You should be very worried…. Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path.”

Very often, we tend to ignore the correlation between economics and religion.

Brilliant article by Salman Rushide on what makes a good literary adaptation. 

What are the things we think of as essential in our lives? The answers could be: our children, a daily walk in the park, a good stiff drink, the reading of books, a job, a vacation, a baseball team, a cigarette, or love. And yet life has a way of making us rethink. Our children move away from home, we move away from our favourite park, the doctor forbids us to drink or smoke, we lose our eyesight, we get fired, there’s no time or money to take a vacation, our baseball team sucks, our heart is broken. At such times our picture of the world hangs crookedly on the wall. Then, if we can manage it, we adapt. And what this shows us is that essence is something deeper than any of that, it’s the thing that gets us through. 

…

But those who do not know who they are, are doomed too: individuals who sacrifice themselves for the sake of pleasing others, comedians who stop telling jokes because they find themselves in a humourless world, serious people who start trying to tell jokes because they fear being thought humourless, people in a new situation, a new relationship, a new university, who act against their natures because they think that’s the way to make things easy for themselves.

Whole societies can lose their way through a process of bad adaptation. Striving to save themselves, they can oppress others. Hoping to defend themselves, they can damage the very liberties they believed to be under attack. Claiming to defend freedom, they can make themselves and others less free. Or, seeking to calm the violent hotheads in their midst, societies can try to appease them, and so give the violent hotheads the notion that their violence and hotheadedness is effective. 

[Tip of the hat to The Mute Oracle and Kalafudra]

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him.

I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of “prejudice” or “ignorance”, but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.

…

But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs – but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.

Read this beautifully articulated argument by Johann Hari in its entirety here.

Talk about religion and you’re bound to get me all worked up; not that I don’t appreciate a good argument, just that a good argument is non existent when it comes to backing faith or the the existence of an omniscient and benevolent creator who has time to answer your petty prayers but blithely ignores starving children in Africa. 

These days, creationists and right wing retards have a new ace up their sleeve. Piggybacking. Despite the Church’s open disdain for inquiry and exploration (over the last few thousand years), they seem oddly content using art and science to explain God and his mysterious ways. A few years ago, I was told that the God of the Old Testament asked for circumcision not merely as a sacrifice but (also) because of health reasons. Sadly, Mr Yahweh forgot to list out naturally occuring carcinogens and deadly viruses.

Now, the Anglicans are looking to appropriate the Doctor Who mythos to ‘explain’ to young people facts about the Bible that would otherwise seem ‘difficult’ to understand. Brilliant. So then, Jesus was a Time Lord right?

One day you distance yourself from Harry Potter and The Golden Compass because they’re well, satanic and the next day you embrace a character (immensely awesome as he is) who espouses the need for questioning and rejecting dogma. All this is probably a sign of the Curch’s waning influence. But then again, we live in a country where almost 70 percent believe in reincarnation and another sizeable number hope to get it on with 72 virgins in the afterlife. Bah.

Carefully unkempt twenty somethings with guitars standing next to bright red and blue boxes; another new indie band promoting cheerful nihilism. Methodically flipping through the pages once every two minutes, I thought to myself about what a creep I was being.

From the corner of my eye I watched her purse her lips to hum a tune; Damien Rice. What is it about a girl humming Damien Rice that never fails to arouse? Standing at the counter, she seemed oblivious to the evening commotion, a disposition that I was drawn to. The pretense of seeming interested in the stacks of music and pop culture journals was wearing thin. It was only a matter of time before someone at the counter realized I was not actually going to buy anything.

As I tried forming sentences from a random array of words in my head, he walked in. Quite an entrance, even turned a few heads in the process. I grinned not giving the slightest hint of displeasure and proceeded to return his rather enthusiastic wave. It was hard pretending to listen to him go on and on about coming to pick someone up. Or something. I managed to shrug, sigh and nod wherever necessary. Tilting my head ever so slightly towards the counter, I watched her tip over a can of coffee beans. Our eyes met and she gave one of those embarrassed smiles; I smiled back. I think. She exclaimed, ‘Best day ever’ to someone else at the counter.

I touched his shoulder politely stopping him mid sentence and managed a hurried goodbye. Too much pressure; I had to leave. Maybe another day. Nevertheless, I surprised myself by making a detour to the counter. She looked up and for about two seconds, I had nothing to say. Then, ‘I’ll have a orange juice.’ Fuck. An orange juice. An orange juice.

She smiled, one I’m assuming they taught her when she signed up for work. ‘That’ll be two fifty’. A false sense of confidence rushed over me by the time I reached into my purse, ‘You spilled a can of coffee beans, didn’t you?’ Way to go. That was as smooth as any opening line.

‘Yeah…I tried forcing the lid open and the entire thing just came off’, she was still smiling.

‘You come in on weekends huh?’

‘Mondays and Tuesdays, mornings and then weekends…wait…how do you know when I come in?’

‘No I just see you on…relax I’m not stalking or anything’. Exit false sense of confidence.

She grinned like a school girl. We had nothing to say to each other. She handed me the orange juice, ‘Thank you! You have a good night.’

‘Sure…you too.’

Making my way out, I couldn’t help but smile. Five weeks and so much progress. Glancing back for the last time, I watched him give her a peck on the cheek. She smiled. Not the one she gave me. Happier.

Epiphanies are dime a dozen; even while packing stuff into boxes. Nomadic exasperation perhaps. I’ve realized I have just a single pair of jeans; that too, one that hasn’t been washed in a couple of months and has been worn more times than it was designed for. All my t-shirts have insignias of marginally obscure cartoons a la Thundercats, comic book characters and band logos. I live in my own little delusional biosphere; oxygenated by seemingly intellectual literature, obligatory rock and indie music, cinema and distorted nostalgia. I pretend to care about things I don’t and am apathetic to the things that may matter. I lift lines from films hoping people won’t notice. I have nothing original to say; And now I learn that I am a cliche. Not a beautiful and unique snowflake. Organic decaying matter.

I’ve been told I act far too old for my age as many times as I’ve been chided for not growing up. In all likelihood, I’ll be that guy who hits 40 and still thinks he’ll make it in a band. Will mediocrity be the result of my struggle for a non conformist higher ground?

And today, she calls me a hipster. There is nothing that soothes the soul like being reduced to a stereotype. Nothing.

The Vatican has outdone itself this time. After the Ten Commandments of Motoring and declaring itself as the one true church, the dark empire has denounced The Golden Compass. For the uninitiated, The Golden Compass is the (children’s) film based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books and from the looks of it, the film will lose millions of dollars in revenue thanks to obedient sheep all over the world.

The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film “The Golden Compass,” which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God. -Reuters

I keep forgetting that in spite of wars, famines, disasters and Uwe Boll, the world is still a warm and fuzzy place. And, out of the thousands of films churned out over the years, it had to be The Golden Compass that promoted such blatant blasphemy.

“In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events,” the editorial said. -Reuters

Am I the only one who finds irony in the above statement? I’d really like to know what the church has to say about the last time God controlled situations and dominated events. Even the most pessimistic of speculative fiction writers would not have imagined that even in the year 2007, religion would enjoy the freedom to air such tripe and worse still, that there would be enough people to actually enforce it.

Damn global warming and nuclear arms, religion may very well end up being humanity’s undoing.

PS: Piss off the Spaghediety and you’ll be hearing from me.

If social networking sites weren’t absolutely necessary to keep alive fading (and in most cases banal) relationships, I would have distanced myself from Orkut, Facebook and the likes. However, I find myself reluctantly holding onto them simply because too many people I know (and would like to keep in touch with) are on it.

A week back I stumbled across a profile that looked suspiciously similar, save the name. The Interests section in particular had the exact same books I had on my profile once. Coincidence? Kindred spirit? Pretender. He even put them in the exact same order with the exact same spelling errors. The enlightened few among you may know that the technology for this exists today. CTRL+C. CTRL+V.

They say that imitation is a form of flattery, but I disagree. Imitation is the result of the lack of drive to pursue an area that one deems interesting. Imitation arises out of laziness. Sadly, the internet is as much a bane as it is a boon. Pretenders with the attention span of an autistic chimpanzee can look up Google or Wikipedia for dumbed down data regarding slightly denser information. I’m not against democratizing information per se, but the way I see it the likely result of “wannabe intellectualism” is the progressive weakening of the human gene pool. Or at least have the decency to follow through. Call it arrogance, call it whatever you want. But the fact is that good number of people seem content going through what was once akin to understanding Sartre by reading the Cliff Notes version. I personally know a handful of people who wax and wane about existentialism and Picasso based solely on what they have read on Wikipedia.

Angry as I was at this particular pretender, I confronted him (albeit politely) about his profile. After feigning ignorance, he proceeded to pass it off as coincidence and later came out with a half assed explanation that would make Dubya’s War on Terror seem like a masterstroke of genius, reason and logic.

I shall now refrain from further pseudo intellectual masturbation.

The art of subtlety died with Keislowski. Unlike today’s filmmakers who underestimate the intelligence of the average person and burden their narratives with superficial dialogues and overly explanatory frames, Krzysztof Kieslowski left most insinuations for the audience to make. This makes the viewing of any Keislowski film a rich and rewarding experience.

Trois Couleurs Trilogy comprises of what were Keislowski’s last three films before he died in 1996. The trilogy encompasses two films which are in French and the other being predominantly in Polish. Critics believe the titles allude to the three colors of the French flag (Blue, White and Red) but according to the interview on the Collector’s Edition DVD of the film, Keislowski stresses that he gave that impression solely for the funding of his films by the French government.

Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) is a study of grief. Juliet Binoche plays the widow of Europe’s premier composer who dies in a car accident along with the couple’s daughter. As she regains consciousness in a hospital, she plunges into denial. The emotions are so layered and complex that I cannot imagine how this would have been at the hands of a lesser filmmaker. As her grief slowly manifests into several other emotions, the viewer is treated to life from her point of view. There is a particular scene where the camera focuses on a sugar cube soaking up coffee. The effect this scene has is enormous; Binoche’s character is trying to drown out a piece of music playing in the background that reminds her of her husband. She goes on to destroy all her husband’s notes and sells her home and belongings in a vain attempt to shield herself from the emotional debris. This is far from being a depressing film; in fact the film ends with redemption on a grand scale. The music is an integral part of the film.

Trois Couleurs: Blanc (1994) unlike the other two films is a comedy and like great comedies, arises out of personal tragedy. Zbigniew Zamachowski plays a Polish man whose French wife (Julie Delpy) wants to divorce him because he’s unable to ”consummate the marriage”. His love is comical mostly because it borders on maniacal obsession. As his life unravels, he vows revenge. He reestablishes his life in Poland and proceeds to construct an elaborate ruse aimed at his wife only to be surprised in the end. I like to think Kieslowski intended this to border on absurdism only to let us take a breath before the rousing final chapter.

Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1995), the final film in the trilogy is my favorite of the lot. The film follows the intertwining lives of a beautiful model (Irene Jacob) and her aged neighbor, a retired judge who listens in on phone conversation of people in the neighborhood. As they embark on a tumultuous relationship that has a profound impact on both, lives around them unravel in painful ways. This film is filled with symbolisms and allusions to the previous two films. The plot is unashamedly philosophical and stresses on the role of chance and the random encounters that create a butterfly effect of sorts in our lives. The narrative structure is very straightforward but you will have to pay attention to every single frame to truly appreciate the genius that is Keislowski. The climax brings together characters from all three films and the impact the final frame has on the viewer is so huge that I was left speechless the first time I watched it.

The five hours I spent watching these 3 films have been some of the most artistically and intellectually rewarding hours ever since I began my slightly more serious appreciation of cinema. I cannot claim to have understood everything Keislowski tried to say, but I’m certain that with repeated viewings and further reading, I may be able to to a certain extent. Thanks to Ruhi for reviving my interest in Keislowski and actually inspiring me to buy a copy of the Collector’s Edition.

Consciousness is a terrible curse. I think, I feel, I suffer.

I woke up this morning with a strong urge to write a short piece on Charlie Kaufman; screenwriter extraordinaire. (This is a prelude, a practice exercise if you will for another essay on Kaufman I’ll be writing soon for…academic (sic) purposes.)

Charlie Kaufman for the uninitiated is the genius behind such gems as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His stories all have immensely relatable characters going through bizarre situations that blur the lines between reality and fantasy.

No writer manages to capture my imagination like he does. His themes are both extremely poignant from an existential point of view as well as the metaphysical; the existence of the soul/conscience, the importance of the self, the meaning of love, life and the likes. Fortunately for Kaufman, his ideas have been perfectly brought alive to the screen by the directors he worked with namely Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze.

In spite of the fantastic nature of his plots, Kaufman’s characters are grounded in reality in a very literal way. For example, Being John Malkovich has the actor John Malkovich find out the people have been misusing a portal into his head. Adaptation is the story of a writer, Charlie Kaufman who has a hard time adapting a book into a film and so decides to adapt himself into the story. His stories deal with the subconscious (as seen in pivotal moments in Eternal Sunshine and Being John Malkovich), the importance of memory and the significance of events we witness as impressionable children. All his films seem to echo the thoughts of the character Craig Scwartz (from Being John Malkovich),

Do you know what a metaphysical can of worms this is?

What is so amazing about Kaufman is his ability to take risks with his characters and the medium which in essence contribute to the originality he’s been praised for. Apart from creating relatable but eccentric characters, Kaufman has an amazing control over structure which I for one consider to be his greatest strength. For example, Eternal Sunshine starts at the end and ends at the beginning. Sure, you’ve had stories like that but this technique proves imperative for Kaufman’s story. It wouldn’t have worked any other way.

No doubt he’s one of the finest writers today whose medium simply happens to be cinema. His ideas on the surface seem like a playful cerebral exercise but if you probe a little deeper through the tangled web of ego (mostly self loathing) and imagination, you find out that he ponders on some of the most important existential problems humanity has faced since time immemorial.

Sadly Kaufman lacks contemporaries today or at least writers of his ilk that I know of (except maybe for Vonnegut; and I’ve read very little Vonnegut) and hence it turns out to be difficult to quantify and compare the talent involved here. That may not be such a bad thing however.

[Note: Picture sourced from www.beingcharliekaufman.com]