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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Animals with ambitions?

Tweet (2016)
Isa Kamari

We, human beings, like to think that we are unique; that everything that happens around us revolves for us and is about us. Maybe, just maybe, animals just like us, do indeed have a consciousness to aspire things in life. They, like us, have hierarchy and order in life. On top that that, they may want to have big dreams and long to be in an imagined place of bliss.

'Tweet' is a thin book which looks sarcastically at the goings-on at a bird park in Singapore. Concurrently, the story tells the conversation between a grandfather and grandson as well a purported communication among and between species of birds in the park.

At face value, the man-boy conversation may seem simple, it is laced with symbolism and philosophy of life. The birds too feel trapped in an environment so alien to their natural habitat. Even though the park promises to be right and fair to its inmates, the whole idea is just to create an aesthetically pleasing surrounding filling it up with pretty birds. Colourful birds are feted while man-defined 'ugly' and plain birds like the crows are shot down. Even though Nature has everything, the good, bad and ugly, people only want to see the watered-down version, minus warts and all; delightful to our visual gratification. 

It is not that Man is doing a service to our avian friends. They have to sing for their supper, do stunts and things beyond what an average bird ever need to do in its lifetime. They say birds are free to fly in the park but why the enclosure. Do birds get emotional pressures that make them think that life is not worth living? Do birds actually think of paradise and harbours hopes of their Maker extraordinaire, like Simuk, in this story? 

An enjoyable and fresh story that makes one think.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Angry birds!

I should be king, you old man!

We came here first, you pendatang!

I am the fairer sex, despite my hue!

And I am left with this miserable fish!

I told you to keep the feet off my territory, as the First Amendment says!

I will get you if that is the last thing I do!

Who is the idiot who stepped my petite toe?

I told you that chick is mine!

I am home alone again while my guy goes gallivanting!

Huh, caught you red handed (footed)!

And you told me it is over between you and the tramp!

Ugh! Tasteless! I told you not to fly.

Cis, bedebah, berani kau?

Nah, ambillah habuan kau!

What miserable life? Feeding these bottomless pits! (Saapaatu Raman -சாப்பாட்டு ராமன் )

Angered by Angry Birds

It looks like in a cycle of every 10 years, someone from some corner of the world will come up with some droll characters which will be personified with human characters and cute aesthetically pleasing features and the world by storm. At the end of the day, it would be aimed at reaping financial benefits out of it. That is always the bottom- line, is it not - $, £, ¥ and €?
In the 1980s, it was the irritating pink female feline kitten which ruled the world. Suddenly, it was Hello Kitty everywhere! There were even shops selling only Hello Kitty merchandise - dresses, slippers, make-up, night gowns, accessories, you name it. I suppose even before that people used to have to fetish for domesticated hairy bears fondly named Teddy after Theodore Roosevelt! And the China Dolls, of course now it means something else...or Japanese porcelain dolls ala Chucky!
Just for information, as of 2003, Sanrio, the Japanese company who designed this Kitty, was earning USD 1billion annually.
Then in the 1990s, it was the reign of the violent Pikachu characters of the digital Pocket Monsters (Pokemon). Maybe, because they were Eastern in origin and came out at the correct time when computer games was at an embryonic state and had the world by storm, many sore loser hurled many brickbats against them. The Christians, Jews and Moslems discouraged people of faith to embrace into its cult-like practices of violence, albeit being just a mirage! If that is not enough to add to their list of problems, some children started having seizures after watching one of their stroboscopic red and blue lighted episodes on TV and it had to be discontinued. 2 kids in Japan filed a legal suit blaming Pokemon for making compulsive gamblers.
Not to be left out in the race for cute animal craze of the world which had been dominated by the Japanese all this while, a Finnish company managed to capture the hearts of the pet-figure deprived population of the world with their computer game called Angry Birds. Suddenly you see people wearing T-shirts bearing the grouchy irritated faces of these avian species and carrying balloons with their caricature! The whole aim of the Angry Birds' game is for the birds to destroy the hiding place of the pigs to retrieve their eggs which were stolen from them, hence their anger!
So, download the application on your i-phones (intelligent phones) and degenerate your brain cells in the process and kill your precious time  in this time deprived fast world as if you have so much of them. Hurt your joints, dim your vision, have a headache, be a recluse, be addicted and basically use your skills to hurl things at pigs like a bird brained loonie! Enjoy...