A menless future?

Nocturnal Animals 2016
Director: Tom Ford

On the one hand, people talk about masculine toxicity, while on the other, they want men to exert their muscular prowess to protect them. When the situation warrants, they want a man to 'act like a man'. When they want to be left alone, they say, 'Don't gaslight me!'

This quite compelling movie has the same intensity as 'Cape Fear' (both Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro versions). It tells the story of a couple and their teenage daughter who are carjacked while travelling through the Texan countryside. The man is taken for a joyride while the wife and daughter are raped and killed. All through the movie, the man is mocked by the young punks hoodlums who carjacked the vehicle for not being manly enough to give them a good fight to protect his family.

The film's story is mainly about a novel draft written by an ex-husband for the ex-wife to read. The movie rolls as she reads through the draft and reminisces about their time together. During their stay together, the persistent issue that crept up was that the husband was not assertive and ambitious enough. Her push for him to sit and write his first novel did not augur well.

As the story progresses, a year later, the man, together with the investigating police officer, returns to the crime scene. As the evidence was weak to arrest the criminals, they took the law into their own hands. The man feels satisfied that he became man enough to kill his family's killers.

Amami spiny rat with no Y chromosome

As if by synchronicity, I soon heard of a science report about the possibility of the Y chromosome going extinct after watching this movie. The X and Y chromosomes initially started being about the same size. Over the years, Nature found many of the genes of the Y-chromosome superfluous and unnecessary. About 1,600 genes disappeared in about 166 million years. We now have 55-56 genes on the Y chromosome, but only 27 are needed to make a man a man. At a rate of loss of 10 genes in a million years, the Y chromosome may disappear in 11 million years. Are we looking at a manless future?

Scientists discovered that a Japanese rat species, the spiny rat, had no Y chromosome. Other chromosomes, however, evolved to ensure the presence of a male-determining gene to maintain the male-female distribution.

As with the complaint that modern men are being domesticated to the extent that the Y chromosome may risk being a vestigial one, fearing the brink of extinction, fear not. Their bodily hairs may reduce, and the skin may be unblemished, but the human species may not have to resort to parthenogenesis or self-pollination to procreate.

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Barbie, a feminist icon?

Barbie (2023) Director: Greta Gerwig

There is a difference between fiction and reality. Like that, there is a stark difference between biology and sociology, between what one wants and what one gets, between doing good and receiving good things and between male and female. What started a plaything is now an icon of feminity?

Life used to be simpler. Boys would play with soldiers and girls with dolls. Maybe it is a realisation movie. The feminists, after fighting all these years for equal rights, against what they perceived as male toxicity or patriarchal thumping, are now realising that they had pushed their agenda too far. The feminist fight has gone too long. Some quarters will swear they have achieved more than they bargained for. Others will assert that they had already been liberated in the 7th century with the introduction of the latest Abrahamic religion, and there is nothing else to fight for anymore. Is Barbie really a feminist icon? Or are they merely another device to exploit people's gullibility to add to the umpteen wants they think they cannot live without? Barbie is if people did not realise, just a figment of one's imagination. It morphed from the inspiration of an adult-themed tabloid, Bild, named Bild Lilli. Lilli had been described as a 'pornographic caricature of a gold-digging exhibitionist and a floozy. In 1964, Mattel bought the copyrights to Bild Lilli, and its manufacturing in Germany ceased. Over the years, instead of empowering young girls, I think it gave young girls body dysmorphia issues.

Of course, over the years, Mattel tried to make Barbie inclusive by creating her line of dolls with themes of the marginalised and the handicapped and in keeping with the times to be inclusive, gender identity-wise. Mattel was happy to include them as more varieties would mean more children harassing their parents for more Barbie dolls.

The film is definitely not children's fare. With such sexual innuendos in its dialogue, it is far from a preteen movie. With a PG-13 rating, the target audience cannot be children. It must be aimed at the 90s kids who grew up with Barbie to know how they had been hoodwinked with a dream of a feminist icon which went too far.

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Be a man!

Kiss of the Spider Women (1985)

Director: Héctor Babenco

Against the backdrop of a despotic Latin American regime and people's uprising, this story looks not at the cruelty of man against a fellow man but at the question of what makes a man a man. 

Two men of opposing characters are confined in the same cell. The characters reflect what society defines men then and now, biologically or psychologically, or in modern terms, assumed gender! Is a man judged by his character or words based on a handshake? 

 

Valentin is the epitome of machoism as defined by society. He is a tanned, hirsute, testosterone-driven hot-blooded member of the revolutionary resistance who is caught for subversive activities against the military dictatorship. The authorities are trying very hard to infiltrate his movement but in vain. 

His cellmate is Luis Molina, an effeminate man, an unabashed homosexual, and a window dresser, who was arrested for corrupting an underage youth. 

In the beginning, Valentin cannot stand the sight of Luis being pushed over, not being assertive, having no self-respect as a man and being quite apathetic about politics. He thinks Luis is a hopeless romantic living in a make-believe world of celluloid characters, as they frequently converse about movies he has watched. 

Meanwhile, Valentin is slowly being poisoned by the authorities to help Lios build a bond and retrieve valuable information about Valentin's underground movement. And Luis has cut a deal with the jailers for freedom in exchange for information about Valentin's movement's next action plan. 

As the story progresses, both men slowly understand each other's situation. Being a man is not all about being macho but is a composite of many things. One must be man enough to do what is right, stand up for his beliefs, and fight against atrocities. Being a man is about something other than being gung ho with action-packed manoeuvres; he can also do it on the sly without much fanfare.

P.S. "Kiss of the Spider Woman" has nothing to do with the Spider-Man franchise. It is not only about the changing nature of the relationship between two very different, totally opposite men in every way who have been locked together in the same cell. Day-to-day experiences open their perspective of the other and develop a common bond.

P.S.S. Thanks to @Tutu Dutta for the introduction to this movie.

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Just when we think it was safe to be amongst our kind!

The Handmaiden (Korean, 2016)
Director: Park Chan-wook

There was a time that it was a given that a lady would feel comfortable in the presence of another lady when she is facing a potentially embarrassing situation. A. male medical practitioner would be required by law when he is examining a female patient. Lady doctors are assumed not to assert their powers over their male patients. 

The ladies washroom was considered a safe space, and they thought they would be protected. When faced with untoward incidents, especially with a member of the opposite sex, ladies would find solace there. After watching numerous Hollywood high school movies, we know how mean girls can be. If they thought that powdering her nose in the company of those of their kind would ensure non-passage of judging looks on her anatomy, I have news for them. Females are their greatest critics.

The members of the fairer sex think they find security in the company of their kind by travelling in ladies-only coaches and parking their vehicles in pink car parks designated for ladies. It is a defeatist idea of women's empowerment. On one end, feminists scream for recognition and respect. On the other, they plead for protection and padding of their falls. In my books, respect is gained through actions, not legislation or helicoptering.

We forget that Korean movies had a healthy life long before the Academy Awards introduced 'Parasite' to the world. And Koreans make more than lovey-dovey soap operas about lost love. Many of their stories are pretty different, and they dare to venture into territories considered taboo by most Asians.

'Handmaiden' is based on the 2002 novel 'Fingersmith' by Welsh writer Sarah Waters. It was set during the Victorian era. This movie's setting is altered to a time when Japan occupied Korea following the Russo-Japanese War. A pair of fraudsters,  Koreans from the lowest rung of war-stricken Korea. They make an elaborate plan to swindle a Japanese heiress. A con man hires a lady pickpocket as a maid to the heiress. The idea is to marry the heiress, get her committed to a mental asylum and abscond with her money.

Things take a turn. The story of the three characters is told from three points of view and ends with a twist at the end. 

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Oh Woke, wake up!

One of the most learned members of our clan, Uncle Shan RIP, was once working as the head of a reform school for juvenile delinquents. In his later years, long after his retirement, he used to reminisce about some of the exciting situations he encountered as a counsellor. I remember one such scenario.

By and large, the school inmates were of extremely high intelligence. The only problem was that their true potential was hijacked by negativity. A teenager was admitted after being caught breaking into a home with his friends and sent to reform school. Uncle Shan used to have pep talks with him. The message that stuck with him was what the young man had told him, "if only my father had smacked me on the head the first time I came back home late, I would not have spent how much time outside and got entangled into the wrong crowd!"

The children do not know what they want. Oh, what the heck? Even adults do not. That probably prompted Steve Jobs to say about mobile phones, "People do not know what they want, we will tell them," when one of the designers queried whether customers would buy into their groundbreaking designs on a device named iPhone.

Michael Jackson lamented that he never had a childhood because his father prepared a gruelling, back-breaking regime to make superstars out of the Jacksons. The fact of the matter is that Michael never grew out of childhood, having been caught in a Peter Pan syndrome trapped in Lala land. Michael would not have attained what he had if not for that early bone-bending manoeuvres. The world would probably not have known about Moonwalk either.

Now it seems that the woke culture has permeated every level of society. Of all professions, one would think that the predominantly conservative and cautious medical community, whose motto 'primum non nocere' (first, do no harm), would be guarded against joining the woke frenzy. Apparently not!

It is puzzling why over such a short period in our civilisation, there is a rush to squash what society has planned over millennia, gender separation. Gender is fluid and binary. Pigeon-holing individuals into gender stereotyping is discriminatory, they say. There is an urgent agenda not to assign gender but to allow children, as early as pre-schoolers, to explore, and discover their true gender, not the biological ones they were born into but with which they align psychologically. But at such a young age?

At lightning speed, the medical fraternity is prescribing hormonal therapy and even gender re-assigning surgery to correct the so-called 'Nature's error of gender designation. But guess what, with all the wisdom and breakthrough discoveries that scientists claim to have, early inventions have proved disastrous in many cases. Puberty springs in and offsets the whole arrangement. Then the person is really trapped.

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The story behind the unkindest cut!

Lorena (4-part Documentary, 2019)
Amazon Prime.

All this while, Bobbitt' case, in my mind, was about slicing off a part of body-part quite dear to the heart of a man by a wife scorned. More often than not, Bobbitt's name is invoked in jocular, tongue-in-cheek conversations rather than anything serious. The truth of the matter is that this case bares open the hypocrisy of a society that considers itself advanced. It also exposes the nation's fixation on sex and how the community uses people's misery for personal gain.  It reveals the various deficiencies in the American law about domestic violence and women empowerment.

At that time in June 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt, a 23-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant, in an apparent fit of rage, sliced off her husband's penis and threw it into a field, I never really got the whole picture of what actually caused the entire fiasco. The media was also biased in painting a picture of a deranged woman of South American descent acting in an un-American way rather than the drama surrounding the whole debacle.

Lorena came to the USA with a student visa, met John Wayne Bobbitt, a US Marine, and got married. She was 20, he, 22. Just a few weeks into their marriage, John Wayne started becoming abusive towards his timid wife. There were even accusations of marital rape and bodily harm. John had left the Marines, and Lorena was the sole breadwinner, working as a nail salon artiste. The torture went on, with multiple police reports and counselling until the fateful day.

John had come home drunk. He forced himself upon her and performed anal sex against her wishes. She sliced his organ with an 8-inch kitchen knife after the act.

After much real-life medical drama, John's organ was successfully reattached.

All the media excitement started after that. Some women's rights activists thought the incident could lead to more awareness of domestic violence. Instead, the case became a tabloid sensation and fodder for comedians. Media publicists represented both parties. TV coverage was a rage. Even small-time entrepreneurs in Manassas, Virginia, made a killing selling memorabilia and T-shirts. Manassas, a sleepy satellite town to Washington DC, became alive with reporters.

One person's misery is another person's 

source of income. T-shirts bearing this

wordings were found sold outside

 the courthouse of Bobbitt's trial.

The Bobbitts were subjected to two trials. The first one was the accusation of marital rape. Because of the technicalities of law in the State of Virginia, John was acquitted. In the second case of Lorena's assault on John, things became complicated. It became a case of 'he says' versus 'she says' as John denied being physically abusive but instead accused Lorena of being the aggressor. Luckily, the previous police intervention and John's friends and neighbours' admission of seeing his darker side helped. 

The jury had a tough time deciding whether Lorena's assault was pre-meditated or due to temporary insanity, as there was a lapse between the abuse and the assault. Finally, the jury agreed that an irresistible impulse occurred after years of abuse and pent-up anger. She escaped imprisonment but spent 45 days in a hospital for mental assessment.

Both the Bobbitts' lives followed different trajectories. Lorena stayed on, became an American citizen, had a child with a new partner in 2006 and became a sort of a feminine icon against domestic abuse. She runs a charity organisation that creates awareness of domestic violence. John, however, spiralled down the rabbit hole of decadence. He became a porn star, got a disastrous penile extension and had a few brushes with the law for battery and theft. Despite all the publicity stunts and job opportunities, he became bankrupt.

Abducted, raped, burnt and
dumped into a pond by
a British police officer
in March 2021.

Whatever was said and done, the people who had the last laugh were the media people. They used the whole imbroglio to their advantage, laughing all the way to the bank. Despite all the ugly prejudices that this case highlighted to the world, almost 30 years on, the world is still fighting the same issues about gender equality, spousal abuse and media frenzy about bedroom issues.

(PS. Isn't it funny that the media is quick to highlight and discredit Eastern cultures when it comes to women empowerment and societal discrimination against ladies? The recent turn of events in the UK has shown that even women there are vulnerable to random killings by unknown assailants for no apparent reason. Women in the USA are not far behind living in fear of domestic violence and brutal beatings.)

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To dance to the tune of...

Dance Like a Man (1989)
Play by: Mahesh Dattani

Thanks to MEV for the introduction.

This play has been staged around the world so many times. Managed to pick up a youtube version of a play done in 2017 by the Asia Society in Hong Kong. It was the 580th show that the group had done around the world. It was made into a film in 2004.

Everyone laments that society is patriarchal in nature. Members of the female gender often complain that their desires are clipped, and the organisation is pro-male, making things easier for them to succeed in life. Ladies achieve greater heights not because of the community's push but despite their hurdles.  

Many cultures have stereotyped gender roles. Certain professions have been typecasted. Some jobs make a man less a man. Till recently, nurses were expected to be females, and male dancers were frowned upon. In this drama, we discover the difficulties a male member of an Indian family has to fulfil his lifelong ambition of becoming a successful Bharatnatyam dancer.

It is more than just that. It also explores the misperception of society that looks at Bharatnatyam dancers as glorified call-girls. It is alright to learn it as a passing phase to ensure continuity of tradition, but the buck stops there. Even for a lady, it is viewed as an inappropriate activity for married women. Society says that a married female body, a vessel for procreation, is too sacred to be ogled by everyone. In a closed knitted community where a married lady is only for the consumption of her husband, a female dancer has to find a husband who would still allow her to pursue her dance ambition after the wedding. In other words, she has to find a partner who would dance to her tune!

The title 'Dance Like a Man' got me thinking. How is it to dance like a man? Are we supposed to be less graceful? Then it struck me.

After being subjugated to all the rules and regulations meted to curb girls' activities in society, over generations, the fairer sex (may not be a 'woke' approved term) has acquired the art of survival. They have learnt how to dominate over another without the other feeling that they are overwhelmed. It is a subtle trickery they employ to get the upper hand in deciding certain things. In reality, their victims have lost their free will, without their realisation, but are remote-controlled by the master puppeteers who control the tug strings.

Indian mothers have perfected this craft. Even though they complain that Indian societies are patriarchal, in reality, they are frequently seen utilising emotional blackmails to achieve their set ambitions. Their elephantine memories of remote and obscure events can make their men 'Dance like a Man'.

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Between keeping the cake and eating it.

Wild Geese (Gan, The Mistress, Japanese; 1953)

They are at a crossroad; between fulfilling their traditional roles playing the second level as the Rock of Gibraltar at the home level versus their empowerment to stand unaided against the elements of Nature. On one end, they have a biological duty to perform to justify their existence. On the other side, there is an element of not wanting to be typecast. What started as complementing one another has turned out as an inter-gender competition, a tit-for-tat. The barrage of information and the bombarding of call for reform proves too confusing. The constant fear of taken for a ride is palpable. They want the cake but eat it too, and ending up losing both; enjoy the ecstasy of being put on a pedestal and the joy of accomplishing biological duties. For some time now, probably from the turn into the 20th century, there has been a perpetual struggle between individualism and the need to fall in line with the demands of society.

This conundrum is apparently relevant today as much as it was in the Meiji-era Japan. When Commodore Perry landed in Japan in 1853, the Japanese who till then had strict isolation policies were shocked. They thought evil men had arrived in their mythical dragon. After initial resistance, they relented to allow American to stop, trade, refuel and repair their vessels. Rather than risk being colonised, they thought of mimicking the enemy. Years later, Emperor Meiji started social and economic reforms. Samurais had to shed their swords for pens. People shed their traditional grabs for western clothes. There was a push to learn, excel and push shoulder-to-shoulder to other sex but, at the same time, women had to find their places in society in the midst of this confusion - between a patriarchal system that had laid rules for gender roles, of a system that brings one down versus women empowerment where one demands what is needed.

Against this background, this film is set. Otama is considered a curse for being a discard. The man she married to turned out to have been married before, with kids. She left, leading a life as a burden and a source of misery to her old father. A devious family friend, wanting to write-off her debts with a loan shark, arranges a meeting with a supposed grieving shopkeeper widower in view of re-marriage. In actual fact, the man is her moneylender. He is unhappily married with kids, looking for a mistress.

The shenanigan is soon discovered. Things get complicated when the moneylender becomes possessive of her and Otama falls head over heel in love with a cash-strapped medical student with big ambitions. Is she going to screw up the plans of a capable young man with her selfish desires? Is he going to give up his offer to work in Europe for love? Where does the arrangement with the moneylender go? Is Otama going to continue living with the dubious reputation of being 'the other woman'?

Rather than trying to outdo each other, there is a need to reach common grounds. Both sexes have their biological and functional roles in society. Their functions, over the years, much like anything in else, have been shoved down their throats. Everyone is equipped with different capacities and capabilities. The society will benefit from harnessing the best out of both parties. It is not a race.

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