01-29-2009, 12:48 PM
via email
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
"Slumdog Millionaire" belongs to the genre of movies like "city of
joy", "fire" and "Mr and Mrs Iyer." It is another reinforcement of the
western "manifest destiny" or "white-man's-burden" view of India - the
constructed image of the "other" that the narcissistic civilization
that is the "west" needs in the process of defining its own self.
Colonized peoples in all cultures and all times in history, (whether
politically colonized or remaining colonized at the psychological
level after the political colonization has ended) must be constructed
in terms that the colonizer can comprehend and control: in the case of
India and Hindus -- as irrational, obscurantist, superstitious,
primitive, divisive, territorial, violent, destructive -- and
therefore, poverty-ridden, downtrodden, immoral, corrupt -- and
therefore -- in the ultimate analysis, unfit for self-determination or
self-rule.
This basic process of imagining the other remains the foundation for
present-day economic-cultural imperialism via "manifest destiny" as it
was during the euro-colonial era via the "white-man's-burden."
Such dialectical image lies at the nexus of a complex game of
representations and imaginary projections. It is a play of mimesis.
'Mimesis' is the fundamental human capacity and subconscious tendency
to imitate and mirror what is different from one's self, or rather,
what is one's self-understanding of oneself.
Mimesis is to imitate and mirror, in other words, one's
"disowned-self" - the opposite of one's ego ideal, individual or
collective. This assumes more intense forms when different cultures
are confronted with one another, often in unequal, exploitative
circumstances.
The colonizing power, which in this case is also a narcissistic power,
feels the compulsion to construct a variety of imaginary
representations of the "other". Projecting their own deepest fears and
the most disowned aspects of their collective subconscious, the
narcissistic west (which itself is devoid of a sense of self, and
which is a guilt-ridden civilization) has to project an "anti-type" of
themselves (as they love to see it) in the mirror of the "other,"
which is the "Orient" - and more specifically - India.
Therefore -- as was in the days before the age of electronic media,
when Katherine Mayo pioneered this whole process by her "Mother
India," followed by a truckload of works to the same ultimate aim and
purpose - the film medium, with a more instant and wider reach and
many times more visual, verbal and vital effect, must be put to full
use - either by the west itself, represented by likes of Dominique
lapierre, Richard Attenborough, or -- now -- Danny Boyle, or by the
"native informants" of the west -- the purchased cultural prostitutes
in the form of Deepa Mehta, Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and the
like. And the "money" used for the purchasing are typically "critical
acclaims", "awards", "reviews" and "film-festival-entries."
Seen in this light, it can now be understood why the very predictable
and very expected ingredients will be brought out and used too in very
predictable and pre-practised ratios, whenever one needs to cook up
yet another dish that serves the narcissistic palate of the west, for
it to gratify itself with "narcissist supply" and reinforce its
narcissistic sense of grandiosity.
Therefore:
(1) The slum -- the foremost basic ingredient, complete with lepers,
beggars, naked urchins, goons, horribly amputated sub-human humans
begging by singing Surdas or Meera bhajans (read: in the name of
Hinduism) etc. - must be first used in liberal amounts.
Subliminal message and image-reinforcement no.1 -- (a) India = slum,
India = poverty, (b) India = hunger, India = primitive/barbaric
inhumanity (amputated child beggars) and finally (d) India = Hinduism
= obscurantism /superstition / regression = poverty/hunger (begging
with Hindu bhajans), therefore, Hinduism is the culprit and the source
of depravity, and so it is the "advanced west's" burden to "rescue the
heathens" from it and replace it with its own value system and
morality and religion.
The other "ingredients" or "components" can then easily complete the recipe:
(2) Muslims = the victims and Hindus = unprovoked aggressors;
(3) Muslims = secular and suffering and Hindus = the powerful hostile majority;
(4) Authorities (policemen) picking on Muslims = Hindu = Hindutva
misrule and minority oppression;
(5) Riot victims = always Muslims (to be shown as always in panic or
running mode) - thereby successfully reinforcing Hindu India into a
hostile, savage jungle where minority lambs and sheep have to spend
their entire lives constantly running and trying to hide;
(6) Christian nuns = benevolent rescuers, selfless servers and
constantly in the risk of getting raped anytime. "Confirming" that
Hindu-majority India can have no decent human rights performance, and
Christianity (read: western helping hand) has no welcome or
appreciation from the barbarians;
(7) Blue-bodied Rama = Hindu icon = inspiration behind the violent,
fanatical, irrational, insensitive, dehumanised Hindu; inspiration
behind "Hindu communalism" (the Sangh parivar -- Rama connection
established) = a dark ("blue" -- as also in Kali) symbol that can even
turn a pre-teen kid into a raging bloodthirsty hate-filled fanatic;
8. Bombay police = the authority, the ruling power, the law-keeper of
Hindu India = always picking on the Muslims = intolerant and
suspicious of help from outside = helps the Hindu fanatics with the
power of their uniforms, therefore making the prevalent law-and-order
situation, human rights records and civic/public life and insecurity
of minorities under Hindu majority rule "very obvious";
(9) The Christian church = the white, Christian first-world western
"helping-hand" trying to make things better for the Hindu masses,
trying to rescue, humanize and enlighten them, but constantly hounded
by the hostile, savage heathens, who cannot go on with their evil if
the church is allowed to flourish and people are made "aware" and
"emancipated";
(10) Amnesty International = another form of the white, Christian,
first-world western hand, extended to the downtrodden dehumanized
Hindu India, but which is not allowed by the authorities, law-keepers
and the public (the powerful and unrestrained Hindu majority) to do
its work for the poverty-ridden heathen Hindus in peace, but is
constantly harassed and forced to try to work under very "challenging
and hostile conditions."
With these ingredients -- the essential 'masalas,' the great Indian
feast of cow-caste-curry (to use the phrase coined by Rajiv Malhotra)
is served before the champagne-caviar-and-red-carpet circuit at Cannes
film festival.
The narcissist has his fill of his essential narcissistic supply. In
fact, he satiates himself with it, gloating over the fact that only
his modern, advanced, first-world, Christian west holds the key to the
emancipation, humanization and the enlightenment of Hindu India via
foreign direct investment, globalization, evangelization, Amnesty
International, Deepa Mehta, and Miss Teresa (Saint of Gutters).
After the cooking is done, carefully suited to the palate of the
targeted customer, the terms and phrases can be pulled out from the
ever-ready stock-in-trade pile of high-sounding "critical-review"
argot -- "intricate and cleverly structured," "breathless," "as drama
and as a look at a country increasingly entering the world spotlight,"
"a modern fairy tale," "a sensory blowout", "one-of-the
most-upbeat-stories-about-living-in-hell-imaginable", "bright, cheery,
hard-to-resist movie", "a
high-octane-hybrid-of-Danny-Boyle's-patented-cinematic-overkill-and-Bollywood's-ultra-energetic-genre-conventions,"
"sprawling-madly-romantic-fairy-tale-epic-is-the-kind-of
deep-dish-audience-rouser" .... and so on.
The more a film on India is pessimistic, dark, pejorative, and
dehumanizingly objectifying, the more thrilling for the narcissist is
his ego-masturbation. For now, he is done constructing an image of the
"other" vis-a-vis which he can feel very good about himself and can
gather a sense of grandiosity -- by way of the film being more
"breathless" and "a sensory blowout" and "bright, cheery
hard-to-resist" - with the occasional self-reminder that it is still
after all a movie on the "other's" "living in *hell*".
It is really as simple as that. There is no mystery at all, and there
is no reason why you or anyone else should miss it and wonder why
"contemporary film making seems to have appreciated little of these
ground realities" and why "instead we find a rehash of the old and
improbable rags to riches story in an ultra-regressive style."
It is also not at all a question of whether any side got the
*historical records and facts* straight, so that we need to ask: "When
was the last time in Indian History when an unprovoked Hindu
population took to violence?" The things is, this kind of a thing is
not refuted or controverted in the first place -- never is it attempted
-- it is only and simply *evaded*.
But there is the other side to it -- the side that is always up to us
to actualize. Colonized peoples -- the "other" -- in all cultures, are
never just passively informed by Western representations of it, even
when they are made to internalize that representation over a period of
time. They too, remain creative agents, who retain the freedom to
rethink, reshape and redeploy themselves in new ways in response to
and even in subversion of the pecking order.
The Hindu diaspora in the west exemplifies that in many ways, big and
small. As was in the previous century, Indians today do not by any
means have to remain passive and unreflective (save only being
reactionary and touchy), merely restricting themselves into a
two-options-only perimeter of consciously or subconsciously
accepting/internalizing the projections and representations imposed on
them, or reacting to them in ways that play into the hands of the
"other" and reinforce their constructions in their minds even more.
On the contrary, we too have (in fact, more than any other colonized
society and culture anywhere) the potential, the ideas, the creativity
and the resources to engage in a variety of appropriative and
subversive strategies. Mimesis is always a two-way street, and peoples
colonized or targeted for colonization have their own forms of
mimesis, their own ways of returning the favour by imaginatively
representing the colonial other -- through mimicry, parody, and satire
they can seize upon the narcissistic imaginings of the narcissist
themselves, by turning them on their heads and manipulating them as a
source of "counter-hegemonic" discourse. And I will say that we have
failed to do that, to make use of that opportunity so far, right from
the time of the "City of Joy" through "Fire" through "Slumdog
Millionaire".
But one fine example of a start in that direction will be - for
instance -- a Madhur Bhandarkar film. Tasting, sounding and feeling the
way only a Madhur Bhandarkar film can taste, sound and feel - with
perhaps, a title (in tune with those like "Fashion" or "Page 3â³) like
.... "Secular." Or "Foreign Aid."
And that should be entered for the Cannes film festival. And that
would be a very fine and deadly example of holding a mirror up to a
narcissistic civilization.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
"Slumdog Millionaire" belongs to the genre of movies like "city of
joy", "fire" and "Mr and Mrs Iyer." It is another reinforcement of the
western "manifest destiny" or "white-man's-burden" view of India - the
constructed image of the "other" that the narcissistic civilization
that is the "west" needs in the process of defining its own self.
Colonized peoples in all cultures and all times in history, (whether
politically colonized or remaining colonized at the psychological
level after the political colonization has ended) must be constructed
in terms that the colonizer can comprehend and control: in the case of
India and Hindus -- as irrational, obscurantist, superstitious,
primitive, divisive, territorial, violent, destructive -- and
therefore, poverty-ridden, downtrodden, immoral, corrupt -- and
therefore -- in the ultimate analysis, unfit for self-determination or
self-rule.
This basic process of imagining the other remains the foundation for
present-day economic-cultural imperialism via "manifest destiny" as it
was during the euro-colonial era via the "white-man's-burden."
Such dialectical image lies at the nexus of a complex game of
representations and imaginary projections. It is a play of mimesis.
'Mimesis' is the fundamental human capacity and subconscious tendency
to imitate and mirror what is different from one's self, or rather,
what is one's self-understanding of oneself.
Mimesis is to imitate and mirror, in other words, one's
"disowned-self" - the opposite of one's ego ideal, individual or
collective. This assumes more intense forms when different cultures
are confronted with one another, often in unequal, exploitative
circumstances.
The colonizing power, which in this case is also a narcissistic power,
feels the compulsion to construct a variety of imaginary
representations of the "other". Projecting their own deepest fears and
the most disowned aspects of their collective subconscious, the
narcissistic west (which itself is devoid of a sense of self, and
which is a guilt-ridden civilization) has to project an "anti-type" of
themselves (as they love to see it) in the mirror of the "other,"
which is the "Orient" - and more specifically - India.
Therefore -- as was in the days before the age of electronic media,
when Katherine Mayo pioneered this whole process by her "Mother
India," followed by a truckload of works to the same ultimate aim and
purpose - the film medium, with a more instant and wider reach and
many times more visual, verbal and vital effect, must be put to full
use - either by the west itself, represented by likes of Dominique
lapierre, Richard Attenborough, or -- now -- Danny Boyle, or by the
"native informants" of the west -- the purchased cultural prostitutes
in the form of Deepa Mehta, Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and the
like. And the "money" used for the purchasing are typically "critical
acclaims", "awards", "reviews" and "film-festival-entries."
Seen in this light, it can now be understood why the very predictable
and very expected ingredients will be brought out and used too in very
predictable and pre-practised ratios, whenever one needs to cook up
yet another dish that serves the narcissistic palate of the west, for
it to gratify itself with "narcissist supply" and reinforce its
narcissistic sense of grandiosity.
Therefore:
(1) The slum -- the foremost basic ingredient, complete with lepers,
beggars, naked urchins, goons, horribly amputated sub-human humans
begging by singing Surdas or Meera bhajans (read: in the name of
Hinduism) etc. - must be first used in liberal amounts.
Subliminal message and image-reinforcement no.1 -- (a) India = slum,
India = poverty, (b) India = hunger, India = primitive/barbaric
inhumanity (amputated child beggars) and finally (d) India = Hinduism
= obscurantism /superstition / regression = poverty/hunger (begging
with Hindu bhajans), therefore, Hinduism is the culprit and the source
of depravity, and so it is the "advanced west's" burden to "rescue the
heathens" from it and replace it with its own value system and
morality and religion.
The other "ingredients" or "components" can then easily complete the recipe:
(2) Muslims = the victims and Hindus = unprovoked aggressors;
(3) Muslims = secular and suffering and Hindus = the powerful hostile majority;
(4) Authorities (policemen) picking on Muslims = Hindu = Hindutva
misrule and minority oppression;
(5) Riot victims = always Muslims (to be shown as always in panic or
running mode) - thereby successfully reinforcing Hindu India into a
hostile, savage jungle where minority lambs and sheep have to spend
their entire lives constantly running and trying to hide;
(6) Christian nuns = benevolent rescuers, selfless servers and
constantly in the risk of getting raped anytime. "Confirming" that
Hindu-majority India can have no decent human rights performance, and
Christianity (read: western helping hand) has no welcome or
appreciation from the barbarians;
(7) Blue-bodied Rama = Hindu icon = inspiration behind the violent,
fanatical, irrational, insensitive, dehumanised Hindu; inspiration
behind "Hindu communalism" (the Sangh parivar -- Rama connection
established) = a dark ("blue" -- as also in Kali) symbol that can even
turn a pre-teen kid into a raging bloodthirsty hate-filled fanatic;
8. Bombay police = the authority, the ruling power, the law-keeper of
Hindu India = always picking on the Muslims = intolerant and
suspicious of help from outside = helps the Hindu fanatics with the
power of their uniforms, therefore making the prevalent law-and-order
situation, human rights records and civic/public life and insecurity
of minorities under Hindu majority rule "very obvious";
(9) The Christian church = the white, Christian first-world western
"helping-hand" trying to make things better for the Hindu masses,
trying to rescue, humanize and enlighten them, but constantly hounded
by the hostile, savage heathens, who cannot go on with their evil if
the church is allowed to flourish and people are made "aware" and
"emancipated";
(10) Amnesty International = another form of the white, Christian,
first-world western hand, extended to the downtrodden dehumanized
Hindu India, but which is not allowed by the authorities, law-keepers
and the public (the powerful and unrestrained Hindu majority) to do
its work for the poverty-ridden heathen Hindus in peace, but is
constantly harassed and forced to try to work under very "challenging
and hostile conditions."
With these ingredients -- the essential 'masalas,' the great Indian
feast of cow-caste-curry (to use the phrase coined by Rajiv Malhotra)
is served before the champagne-caviar-and-red-carpet circuit at Cannes
film festival.
The narcissist has his fill of his essential narcissistic supply. In
fact, he satiates himself with it, gloating over the fact that only
his modern, advanced, first-world, Christian west holds the key to the
emancipation, humanization and the enlightenment of Hindu India via
foreign direct investment, globalization, evangelization, Amnesty
International, Deepa Mehta, and Miss Teresa (Saint of Gutters).
After the cooking is done, carefully suited to the palate of the
targeted customer, the terms and phrases can be pulled out from the
ever-ready stock-in-trade pile of high-sounding "critical-review"
argot -- "intricate and cleverly structured," "breathless," "as drama
and as a look at a country increasingly entering the world spotlight,"
"a modern fairy tale," "a sensory blowout", "one-of-the
most-upbeat-stories-about-living-in-hell-imaginable", "bright, cheery,
hard-to-resist movie", "a
high-octane-hybrid-of-Danny-Boyle's-patented-cinematic-overkill-and-Bollywood's-ultra-energetic-genre-conventions,"
"sprawling-madly-romantic-fairy-tale-epic-is-the-kind-of
deep-dish-audience-rouser" .... and so on.
The more a film on India is pessimistic, dark, pejorative, and
dehumanizingly objectifying, the more thrilling for the narcissist is
his ego-masturbation. For now, he is done constructing an image of the
"other" vis-a-vis which he can feel very good about himself and can
gather a sense of grandiosity -- by way of the film being more
"breathless" and "a sensory blowout" and "bright, cheery
hard-to-resist" - with the occasional self-reminder that it is still
after all a movie on the "other's" "living in *hell*".
It is really as simple as that. There is no mystery at all, and there
is no reason why you or anyone else should miss it and wonder why
"contemporary film making seems to have appreciated little of these
ground realities" and why "instead we find a rehash of the old and
improbable rags to riches story in an ultra-regressive style."
It is also not at all a question of whether any side got the
*historical records and facts* straight, so that we need to ask: "When
was the last time in Indian History when an unprovoked Hindu
population took to violence?" The things is, this kind of a thing is
not refuted or controverted in the first place -- never is it attempted
-- it is only and simply *evaded*.
But there is the other side to it -- the side that is always up to us
to actualize. Colonized peoples -- the "other" -- in all cultures, are
never just passively informed by Western representations of it, even
when they are made to internalize that representation over a period of
time. They too, remain creative agents, who retain the freedom to
rethink, reshape and redeploy themselves in new ways in response to
and even in subversion of the pecking order.
The Hindu diaspora in the west exemplifies that in many ways, big and
small. As was in the previous century, Indians today do not by any
means have to remain passive and unreflective (save only being
reactionary and touchy), merely restricting themselves into a
two-options-only perimeter of consciously or subconsciously
accepting/internalizing the projections and representations imposed on
them, or reacting to them in ways that play into the hands of the
"other" and reinforce their constructions in their minds even more.
On the contrary, we too have (in fact, more than any other colonized
society and culture anywhere) the potential, the ideas, the creativity
and the resources to engage in a variety of appropriative and
subversive strategies. Mimesis is always a two-way street, and peoples
colonized or targeted for colonization have their own forms of
mimesis, their own ways of returning the favour by imaginatively
representing the colonial other -- through mimicry, parody, and satire
they can seize upon the narcissistic imaginings of the narcissist
themselves, by turning them on their heads and manipulating them as a
source of "counter-hegemonic" discourse. And I will say that we have
failed to do that, to make use of that opportunity so far, right from
the time of the "City of Joy" through "Fire" through "Slumdog
Millionaire".
But one fine example of a start in that direction will be - for
instance -- a Madhur Bhandarkar film. Tasting, sounding and feeling the
way only a Madhur Bhandarkar film can taste, sound and feel - with
perhaps, a title (in tune with those like "Fashion" or "Page 3â³) like
.... "Secular." Or "Foreign Aid."
And that should be entered for the Cannes film festival. And that
would be a very fine and deadly example of holding a mirror up to a
narcissistic civilization.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->