Every community discriminates...

Room at the Top (1959)
Director: Jack Clayton

Watching the movie, one realises how much the world has changed. Imagine hearing a line such as this that praises the hero's masculinity: "Too many pansies about these days!" Even within society, in the so-called Imperial power, which was just ruling half the world and believed it was their god-given duty to bring modernity to the heathens and lost natives in the dark continents, it was so dysfunctional.

Condemning the people of its jewel of the Crown, that it was discriminatory against their own kind, and highlighting the ugly side of caste separation in India, Britain gave the impression that its society was free of prejudices. We know that it is not true. The British 'divide and rule' policy in India must have its roots in its own backyard. The British divided their community into two major classes. The aristocratic class would have close ties to the royal family and would also be the more educated group in society. The remainder would be the working class. There was a constant battle amongst the working class to somewhat niggle themselves to be among the affluent aristocratic ones. In essence, it is a journey to the top echelon of the food chain.

This story follows the journey of a civil servant from humble beginnings who seeks to advance socially by marrying into a wealthy family. He inadvertently falls in love with another woman, a married lady, which complicates things. His background impedes his ascent of the social ladder. His friends and relatives advise him to be among his'own kind'. He believed his time in the army would enhance his social standing. Paradoxically, the well-heeled have their own ways to use their influence to gain more benefits from the same stint. He is left in a limbo - to be with his true love or continue in his pursuit of riches.

A film that illustrates discrimination is as old as human civilisation. No society can proudly say that it is genuinely free without discrimination, patriarchy, bigotry, or chauvinism.

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Why so angry?

Look Back in Anger (1958)
Director: Tony Richardson

Why are people so angry these days? Everyone is like a live wire. A slight provocation and they get triggered. They have something precious to protect, their personal freedom and liberty. They are not going to trade that for anything or with anyone. 

This British movie, another from the Kitchen Sink era, tells of the changing times in mid-50s UK. The war had ended, but so had the mighty British Empire. The sun had finally set on the British Empire. The natives who had been kept under their thumbs had wised up. Some had followed them home, to the UK, trying to be their equal. 

The movie revolves around a frustrated university graduate from humble beginnings who opts to join the common people by selling sweets at the market and playing his trumpet at a jazz bar instead of being amongst the white-collar crowd he could have been. He is in a live-in relationship with a girl from an aristocratic background. The girl has found out that she is pregnant, but cannot find a suitable time to tell the boy, as he is angry all the time. 

Richard Burton gives a stellar performance as the angry man. 

Why do people get angry and stay with a persistent baseline of anger? They may miss a good time of the past that they do not seem to replicate and continue to enjoy. The older generation in the movie longed for the times when the brand ‘Britain’ carried so much gravitas. There was a distinct class segregation within the society. Now, in their opinions, with the new outlook of the 50s generation, it is collapsing. Everyone is free to mingle. People do not look up to those higher in the pecking order.

Paradoxically, we see an Indian immigrant also whining. He left his home because he was discriminated against there based on his caste. He was compelled to leave India because of this. He thought the UK was the land of the free. Now, in the UK, he is again discriminated against, too, for not being one of them but an outsider. They seem no difference, whether he is in India or the UK.

The young ones of the mid-50s were restless. What they learnt and were taught is that all are created equal and that the system is fair to all. They do not see that in real life. The elders do not practise what they preach. I think, with the spread of socialism, youngsters are increasingly looking at an unattainable utopian unicorn, pink elephants, and a rainbow, where nobody needs to work hard but can indulge in perpetual self-gratification.

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The Kitchen Sink period

The L-shaped Room (1962)
Director: Bryan Forbes

https://www.amazon.co.uk/L-Shaped-Room-
Digitally-Restored-
DVD/dp/B076CWVJ2Y

Learned a new word today - ‘kitchen sink’period — to describe a period of British drama and cinema. It flourished from the late 1950s through to the early 1960s. Stories from this era often depict anger and frustration. Films of that genre, typically shot in black and white, were usually filmed in confined spaces within cheap accommodations. Unlike mainstream films that focus on make-believe idealism and poetic justice, these films highlight the harshness of everyday life and the evolving social mores among young adults. 

Logically, the era should have been quite upbeat. On paper, the war had ended, the economy was promising, and employment was made available to the general public. All these improvements should logically make everyone in the UK happy. In reality, however, only the older people of that era felt content with the turn of events. 

The young were restless and had other ideas. They were caught in a quagmire of confusion and were disenchanted with the social values set by the preceding generation. They manifested their disenchantment through their writings, music and songs. 'Kitchen sink' period films showcased the anger of the young adults against the complacency of their parents' generation. The movies explored social and political issues, as well as the challenges faced by working-class individuals and minorities on the margins of society. Taboo subjects like abortions, pre- and extramarital sex are discussed openly. In this film, homosexuality is implied. 

The skiffle music, which was famous in that era, may have been an expression of these restless souls. It later morphed into British pop, with bands such as the Beatles and the British Invasion. Skiffle bands may have started from traditional jazz bands.

The amusing aspect of the whole thing is that parents in 2025 are also facing the same conundrum. Despite the leap in knowledge acquisition and the level of living comfort never experienced by previous generations, many millennials and Gen-Z individuals still feel deeply discontented with life. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are both said to face serious challenges in their lives. They are said to struggle with financial insecurities, social awareness, and the pursuit of idealism in a competitive environment.  

As with early Boomers who predicted doom and gloom for their children, these young people, too, will surely carry the human flag into the next generation.

The L-Shaped Room is a multiple award-winning movie about a 27-year-old unmarried French woman, Jane Fossett, who decides to leave her parents' home in France after discovering that she may be pregnant. She must have had an uncomfortable discussion with her parents that led her to leave home. The child's father is not interested in being a father. Jane is also not interested in getting married. Jane stays in a rundown boarding house that also houses other interesting characters: a struggling writer, a gay musician, a prostitute, and a cranky landlady. The house has bed bugs and flimsy walls, which only add to the desperate state of their lives.

Meanwhile, everywhere Jane goes, including the gynaecologist she visits, everyone assumes that she is going to abort the baby. Jane, however, is seriously considering keeping the baby. Things get complicated when Jane falls in love with her flatmate, who is unaware of her pregnancy.

P.S. In 1956, when Elvis started gyrating his pelvis to the tune of 'Hound Dog', he created a national panic. Puritans labelled him vulgar, and the fundamentalists screamed, "The End is Nigh!"

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Times were a'Changing!

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Director: James Mangold

Clip from Youtube

One of my earliest memories from the late 1960s is of my uncle spending weekends at my house. He was a university student, a rare sight in Malaysia then. I was fascinated by the shaving cream he and his friend, who accompanied him, applied to their faces and skillfully shaved off. What intrigued me even more was the fragrant aftershave lotion they put on afterwards. I was captivated by the lovely containers it came in. I later discovered it was 'Old Spice'. Its logo, a pirate ship, left a lasting impression on me. They spoke a great deal in English, and I often wonder what they discussed—perhaps the societal changes about which Bob Dylan wrote in his songs? I could not comprehend the messages as they were mainly in English, the lingua franca of the educated lot in the country.

As we know, the 1960s were tumultuous times. The Americans were the de facto leaders of the free world, whilst developing countries struggled to free themselves from the yoke of colonisation. Communist ideology gained popularity among young rabble-rousers who believed Marx's teachings could save their nations and the world from annihilation. The US viewed it as its moral duty to curtail leftist ideas and promote the message of a free world. The Americans, however, wised up. Seeing the devastating effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, the inhumane expulsion of tribes from Bikini Atoll and seeing bodybags returning from Korea and later Vietnam, in the carefree times of rock and roll, people started expressing their discontent.

At about this time, a young Bob Dylan packed his guitar and landed in New York to meet his ailing idol Woody Guthrie. He soon got into the folk music scene there. The film tells about Dylan's rise to stardom and the opposition he got as he decided to introduce electric guitar and other band instruments into his presentation. The folk music purists feel that he was damaging the essence of folk music by going electric. The movie ends in 1965 when Dylan finishes a stunning performance by introducing his electric make-over, performing on his acoustic guitar, and riding into the sunset on his motorbike.

https://www.motorcyclistonline.com/bob-dylan-motorcycle-crash/

The movie is not a full biopic but a part of Dylan's life. I was looking forward to knowing about his most talked about alleged bad motorcycle crash that cracked several vertebrae, a concussion and facial lacerations, but it was not included. Upon researching, I discovered that it happened a year after the timeline where the story ends. Like many of Bob Dylan's great stories, famous for half-truths, and outright lies, the motorcycle accident is shrouded in mystery. There is a possibility that the accident never took place as there was no record of hospital admissions for an injury so severe. Dylan could have just burned out. Possibly, such an accident never took place; he just wanted to be 'out of the rat race'.

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Part of the company you keep!

Onibaba (Japanese, 1964)
Director: Kaneto Shindō

Many stories tell us to be wary of the company we keep with. Like how Amma frequently reminds us, a calf, if it moves around with piglets, will eventually join the piglets and source its daily meals from the rubbish dump. An animal, placed high in Hindu society, will ultimately do unholy things depending on the company it keeps. 

There is something special about black-and-white movies and the horror genre. It reminds me of my childhood, when my sisters and I would flock around our home 16" TV, squinting to watch RTM's Friday offering of Cerita Pontianak. Even the poor makeup of Pontianak would scare the living daylights out of my sister. She would even be scared to enter the kitchen. To make it worse, I would hide around the corner and jump suddenly in front of her, making her scream!

Onibaba is a classic Japanese movie set in the Samurai era. Times are bad. All the territories are at loggerheads; all men are out to fight, and the women have to rough it out, scavenging on whatever comes their way, stealing from travellers, catching dogs for meals and selling loots. A lady and her daughter-in-law desperately try to survive in that climate. A neighbour, who returns from war, informs them that the lady's son died, not in the war, but while stealing food. The lady blames the neighbour for the son's death. The neighbour seduces the young widow, but the lady is not very happy about it. The lady's daughter-in-law, the young widow, is secretly in love with him and has secret trysts in the dark of the night. The lady comes to know of this and tries to prevent her.

One day, as the lady follows the daughter-in-law to one of these late-night meetings, she is stopped by a mask-donning samurai at knife-point. The lady tricks the samurai by pushing him into a pit. She removes his mask and wears it to scare her daughter-in-law. It works, but the mask gets stuck to her face after getting wet in the rain. After forcefully removing the mask, the lady and her daughter-in-law discover that her face has peeled off and is disfigured. The daughter-in-law runs away scared. The lady falls into the same pit and dies.

A chilling movie. Introduces the Hannya masks, usually used in Japanese Noh theatres, typically representing a jealous female demon.

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I spy... with my U-2!

Bridge of Spies (2015)
Director: Steven Spielberg

The Second World War had ended. The Sun had finally set on the mighty British Empire. The post of world supremo was up for grabs. Over at the blue corner, secluded far away from powerful neighbours, the capitalist USA was the poster boy to prove the case that 'greed is good'. Meanwhile, at the red corner, the Soviet Union spread the idea of equity and condemned the Western way of life as decadent. 

Riddled with secrecy and the zest to supersede the other regarding military supremacy and space explorations, the Soviet-US animosity reached mammoth proportions in the post-WW2 era. Each was spying on the other and trying to outdo the other. After witnessing the devastation that the mushroom clouds did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans had the pressing need to keep nuclear bomb technology within American shores. On top of that, an even more devastating bomb in the form of hydrogen bombs was in the limelight. The Americans did not want the Russians to acquire that knowledge. They wanted to bring the whole world under their hegemony.

German scientists who absconded Nazi's harassment were rounded up for the Manhattan Project and other scientific explorations around WW2. They contributed much to American scientific prowess.

U2 planes could fly at an altitude of 70,000 ft. Flying at a specific speed, the Americans thought they could avoid detection. On May 1, 1960, equipped with a quality camera, a U2 plane left Peshawar on a reconnaissance mission to take high-quality photographs deep into the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the Russians detected the plane and shot a missile at it. The plane went down. 

Back in the USA, the American public was informed by NASA that their weather plane had crashed, killing its pilot, off the Turkey border. A fake NASA plane was shown as the ill-fated plane. The Soviets kept a tight lip about the whole incident. 

Francis Gary Powers

Soon, Krushscoff made a statement that a US spy plane had crashed in their territory, and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was in their custody. This was a massive embarrassment to Eisenhower and his administration. Powers, it seems, was given the appropriate treatment as should be offered to a captured enemy, tried and sentenced to three years of imprisonment and seven years of hard labour. 

That is where events related to this movie come in. 

In 1960, Rudolf Abel (posthumously found to be a fake name) was caught as a Russian spy. The courts, wanting to appear to give a fair representation, appointed James Donovan, an insurance lawyer, to defend him. With the 1950 Rosenberg espionage trial and subsequent execution still in the American psyche, the public wanted blood. The Rosenbergs were accused of passing sensitive documents related to the Manhattan Project to the Russians. Amidst public admonishment and displeasure, Donovan gave Abel a fighting chance. Much to everyone's chagrin, Abel probably escaped the electric chair due to Donovan's pleas. He got 30 years imprisonment. 

James Donovan's name came to the limelight again when the idea of prisoners swapping in 1962 popped up. The exchange was planned in West Berlin over Gleiniche Bridge, christened the 'Bridge of Spies' because many high-level deals were made here. As another side deal, an American student doing his PhD in Berlin was also released by the East German Stasi. For the record, the Berlin Wall was erected overnight in August 1961.

Rudolf Abel became one of Russia's most successful spies. After his release, he held important administrative and teaching positions in the Soviet Union. 

(NB If you think the LTTE is cruel as their fighters carry cyanide-filled pendants to avoid capture and later interrogations, U2 pilots carry a deadly neurotoxin-impregnated needle hidden in a coin for them to inject themselves during instances when they cannot stand the torture of enemy. And the pilots barely passed twenty!)

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Back to the USSR?

Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles (1965)
Rev. David A. Noebel

An Analysis of the Communist use of music - the Communist Master Plan.

This book predates John Lennon's infamous press statement in 1966, in which he was quoted as saying that the Beatles were, at that time, 'more popular than Jesus'. To his defence, the baby boomers were, in fact, losing interest in what the church had to say. 

In 1956, during a visit to Poland, Nikita Khrushchev was thought to have told the West that he would 'bury them'. Some say it was something that came out after being lost in translation. Again, during his state visit to the US, he may have said (again disputed) that he predicted the adoption of communism and the gradual creation of a 'socialist stare' in the US. 

David Noebel is said to be a fiery Christian evangelist who argues his claims with dubious scientific evidence. In this booklet, he used many Pavlovian animal behavioural study models to convince his congregation that music has a hypnotizing effect that can alter teenagers' responses to situations. He even goes to the extent of suggesting that music can be used as a brainwashing device. He quotes Khrushchev as saying that the Soviets did not have to do anything to turn Americans into commies. They will change in time. Through music? "Have they planted this through rock and roll?" he asks.

Looking at how the millennials and the woke generation behave, it seems like Khrushchev's dream may have materialized. Extremist leftist ideas have permeated all forms of life. All the institutions have been infiltrated. Posts on social media reeks of the communist ideas. They claim to champion the marginalized, but what they really want is the annihilation of our civilization as we know it. They even have opinions on theistic matters even though they are godless in their belief system.

After seeing their mesmerizing effect on their young audience, the author has a bone to pick with the Beatles. He cannot fathom what makes them go hysterical to the extent of peeling off their undergarments. 

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Belacan

Migrant stories of yore from Malaysia by Farouk Gulsara

Ah Soh with Nand Lal, Saraswati’s son.
(Photo taken circa the early 2000s).
Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/

“There she goes again,” thought Saraswati as she cut vegetables she had never seen in her native country. “Here goes Ah Soh cooking her stinky dish again.”

Saraswati, Ah Soh and the rest of the pack are people commonly called fresh off the boat. They hail from various parts of China and India.

The loud beating of a metal ladle against a frying pan, accompanied by the shrilling Chinese opera over the radio and her shrieking at her children, need no guessing whose kitchen ‘aroma’ is coming from. Everyone knows Ah Soh is frying belacan, a fermented Malay shrimp paste.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/?

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