RIFLE RANGE BOY

Lady in the Lake (Miniseries) Season 1, Episodes 1-7. An intriguing miniseries set at a time when Black Americans had an understanding with Jewish Americans. Even though Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to declare all slaves to be free, in reality, the Blacks still received the short of the stick. In so many instances, they were discriminated against. The law was not in their favour either. The Blacks had to prosper by themselves despite the restrictions. Some beat the systems and joined the mainstream, while others prospered through an alternative economic system. The evidence of their successes includes the Harlem Cultural Renaissance in the 1920s and the numerous legislative gains through the efforts of the NAACP (North America Association of Colored People). Many of the African-American associations worked in tandem with many Jewish bodies. The Jews also felt the discriminatory vibes of the predominantly Anglo-Saxon majority of America. The earlier interactions between ...

Origin (2023) Director: Ava Duverney (Based on the book, ' Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' by Isabel Wilkerson) It is an interesting way of looking at all the problems affecting the world today. It is blamed on caste segregation. Traditionally, we think of caste as a problem only affecting India. And Indians believe it is a system brought in by colonial masters and divided the nation to ease control. The stifling of one layer of society over the other is not just based on the colour of their skin. It is something beyond. The group at the top end of the food chain would want to maintain the status quo and keep the people beneath them forever squashed. The writer, Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, compared situations in three scenarios.  She looked at the black situation in America, where blacks are stereotyped as troublemakers, poor, unemployed, unemployable and criminals. The system reinforces this stereotype upon them to a level that even the blacks buy into t...

Emergency (2022) Director: Carey William Sikhism is professed by 25 to 30 million worldwide and is the fifth-largest religion in the world. Even though Sikhs constitute only 1.72% of India's population and 1.02% of the world's population, they are instantaneously recognised, not only by their unique appearance but also by their industriousness and successes. In India and the rest of the world, wherever they migrate, their proportion of poverty, as compared to other groups, remains the lowest. Outside Punjab, some minorities still excel without political assistance. Reaching foreign shores as economic migrants, they generally prosper and outperform other immigrants. They blend well into society and have the tongue to learn to speak the local lingo swiftly. Pretty soon, they will be sitting in professional bodies. The Sikhs are often seen by community leaders as a shining example of how societies should progress. Someone toyed with the idea that lack of political representation a...

Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom (2022) Documentary; Netflix Humans thought living in big numbers protected them from the elements, predators and even enemies. Security concerns were taken care of by the individual community itself. It was jungle justice with no higher justice to recourse. Might decided what was right! As communities coalesced into country-states, the job of security and protection was outsourced to the State. Suddenly there was no reason for the average citizen to hold powerful weapons. The duty to apprehend and punish wrongdoers was outsourced to State-owned agencies. These agencies were supposed to protect all levels of society, the powerful and powerless alike. It looks all nice on paper, but in reality, the mission statements of these agents are mere rhetorics to pacify the vote bank. The minorities and the weak can only cry foul, fill up the newspapers and breaking news segments and spit on the system. People will bear with the imperfections of the system. ...

Madaathy, An Unfairy Tale. (Tamil; 2021) Director & Writer: Leela Manimekalai It is said there is a back story behind every village deity. Madaathy is one such goddess. A representative of the feminine powers of the Universe, it is said that she is the embodiment of the spirit of a wronged low caste adolescent girl.  The first scene itself sets the mood for the rest of the movie. A newly-wed couple, in their best attire, goes on a joyful motorbike ride to Madaathy temple. En route, the bride realises that she just started her menstruation and insists that they stop to get some kind of sanitation napkin. It would flash upon viewers that we are into something taboo. Are they going to cancel their journey or continue to the destination? We are left to wonder. The story revolves around a group of the lowest of the Dalit community, the Puthirai Vannars.  Sometimes, I wonder whether these types of communities and such levels of oppression do actually exist. According to the dire...

Yennanga Sire Ungga Sattam (என்னங்க சார் உங்க சட்டம், Tamil; 2021) Director: Prabhu Jeyaraman Suppose the idea of affirmative action is to uplift a particular community group and give an equal fighting chance to the oppressed to get their place in the sun. In that case, it should only be handed to one generation. After being given the levy, their offspring should not be expecting the same. Everybody only gets one chance. They are expected to pull themselves up by their boot-straps with the chance given to them. That is it. Freebies are not infinite.  This film is one of the many new genre movies which highlights the plight of fringe people. The filmmakers named this movie a duplex as the real story with message starts with the movie's second part. The first part is essentially a draggy commercial that does not contribute much to the rest of the story. In a complicated way, it boils down to two scenarios. The first instance involves an interview for a government post. The viewe...

Sennai (செந்நாய், Clay-coloured dog, Tamil; 2021) Directed: Jayakumar Sedhuraman There is a new genre developing in Tamil cinema. It is usually done by independent studios as it deals with subjects no major production houses and directors would want to dip their hands in. It is called the Dalit cinema. It deals with primarily taboo issues that affect the Dalit community, Officially caste discrimination is supposed to have been eradicated from the day-to-day life of an average Indian from the early days of Indian Independence, but in reality, it is far from over. I remember a staff nurse who was high-in-demand to assist in neurosurgical surgeries. Every time that medical centre had an emergency neurosurgical case, her assistance was sought. She was there in all such cases, nursing each patient back to health. Unfortunately, when the same nurse had a medical emergency, she had to be transferred to a public hospital due to the exorbitant cost involved in treating her there.  The same ...

Coded Bias (Netflix Documentary, 2020) Director: Shalini Kantayya If passing the Turing test marks the acceptance of an automaton as a legitimate thinking body, we must also have a test to ascertain whether we have enough intelligence to be identified as a full-bodied homosapien at all. We think we are wise, but we repeatedly fall prey to sweet talks and indulgences in a single minute's pleasure, only to brood it all the morning after. We give away all our personal and intimate information willingly, only to realise much later that it has been used against us by the powerful. In the name of the country and doing good deeds, we surrender, only to be led to the slaughter. Even when it comes to sending someone to the guillotine, there is discrimination. This, an MIT computer scientist, Joey Buolamwini, found it the hard way. When working on a facial identification device, she increasingly realised that machines repeatedly falter in identifying black and brown faces. When she wore a wh...