Take control!

CTRL (Hindi, 2024)

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

A toddler looks at a portrait on the wall and automatically swipes his hand, expecting to see another picture. Every child from every crook and nook of the house burrows out the moment the WiFi router is turned off, blurting, in their weary red eyes, “The WiFi is not working!” Never mind that the house is burning!

We have become digitally addicted. Social media is closely linked to this connectivity. So gratifying has this media interaction become that people would rather communicate via their devices than in person. It simply simplifies things. One can do away with the customary curtsies and communicate when necessary and on the go.

The serotonin infusion given by likes and thumbs up has reached such alarming levels that children have been known to have bitten off the hands that fed them. Mothers have been bludgeoned by their children in tantrums.

Never in human history have people been scrutinised so minutely as in Instagram and Facebook posts. Filters and enhancement techniques have turned people into porcelain mannequins that they are not, appearing unblemished with infantile innocence.

To complicate this unstoppable monster comes deepfakes and artificial intelligence that highlight the natural stupidity of humans. Lured by fame and that one-minute spot under the spotlight, they are willing to lose all decency and privacy. What we need to realise is that it comes with a price. We become open books for devious conglomerates to own us, monetise us, commoditise us and wrap us up around their fingers.

Under the cloak of anonymity, humans, too, become emboldened to blurt out things with no filter that we would not otherwise do in person. We threaten, bully, haunt, and act like a mob would. We clamour in excitement when someone falls from grace. It becomes our next teatime or Twitter conversation. For some, the stress of this fall is too much for their simple minds to handle and find an easy exit.

This movie, a new format for an Indian film, shows the evil that new computer tech companies can and will do to spy on people and manipulate them for their own monetary gains. It is a fresh movie with a fresh face that blends well into the world of influencing and internet stars. It highlights the narcissistic nature of the current generation and how ever ready they are to pose and come out with a picture perfect at the drop of a coin.

The lesson is that we are doomed. We cannot live without digital connectivity, but at the same time, we have signed off on ourselves and our liberty to the big companies who call the shots now. They have infiltrated every fibre of our modern lives. They have become the modern-day imperialists with big gunboats and canons, too mighty for peasant natives to fight with spears and blowpipes.

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

Beware the deep and dark webs!

Irumbu Thirai (இரும்புத்திரை, Iron Curtain, Tamil; 2018)

Every now and then, one can get a fresh new idea popping up in Tamil movies and this is one. As usual, most often the filmmakers, in their best wisdom, would decide that the storyline should be so frivolous that the whole film will end up making not much for an impact, especially to those outside the purview of Kollywood fans. 

This film acts more like a PSA (public service announcement) highlighting the general public the dangers of freely divulging personal particular and private data to social media and to people of authority. 

The gist of the story is how loans supposedly released for purchases end up with third parties via interception at a digital level. In the greater scheme of things, these wastages are mere paper losses. To the poor debtors, it is a question of life or death; of loss of livelihood. As far the bank is concerned, the transaction is done and the borrower has to pay, no matter what. 

In the movie, the audience is also introduced to the Darknet, perhaps in a completely one-dimensional manner. It gives the impression that the Dark Web is interchangeable with the Deep Web (where private data is stored) and is owned by a single person and everything bad that happens in the world can be traced to it. A little clarification is warranted. Perhaps the two Youtube snippets below can shed some light into this.

The Dark Web or Darknet provides an authority control-free environment for people to conduct their activities. Unfortunately, it also became an avenue for drug pushers, pimps and smugglers to conduct their clandestine activities and launder their monies through the help of cryptocurrency.

Two disturbing things that appear in this film involve the main two characters. The hero, an Indian Army Major is seeing wooing foreign tourist in the hope of marrying them and migrating away from India. It does not speak much of an Army Officer who has so much disdain over the nation that he is supposed to be defending.

In another scene where this Major is assigned to a psychiatrist for anger management issues, it appears to me that their (the Major and the psychiatrist) interaction is anything but a physician-patient one. No one seems to realise that something is wrong in the manner their business is handled. 

And again it is the lesson of poetic justice and the unbelievable success story of a lone wolf against the powerful and intricate web of baddies of international proportions. This formula works for some.

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