Scary at the top?

Succession (Miniseries, 2018-23)

S1-4, 39 episodes. 

I was given the impression that I had been living under a rock for not having heard of a miniseries called 'Succession'. I was also made to believe that 'it was so good', as if missing it meant I had lost my purpose in life. My compulsion to watch this built up, and sitting through all forty episodes (because one has to finish what he starts and never take a back foot), my conclusion is this. One can still have a full life, giving this one a miss. 

Something that could be summarised in a season is dragged out over four, to keep viewers intrigued by the lives of the rich and famous, especially when it comes to someone as cutthroat and controversial as Rupert Murdoch. The media mogul who made his mark in the late 20th century had always been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. 

His company was at the centre of a massive phone-tapping controversy in 2011, which led to major payouts and the closure of one of his UK papers. He is also believed to have wielded substantial political influence in the UK, the US, and Australia, swaying public opinion and magnifying or burying news. 

Towards the later stages of his life, the Murdochs had to deal with a taunting succession issue. While Murdoch Sr did not want to relinquish control of the business to any of his kids, whom he thought were not worthy of the top chair, the children were competing to outdo one another to capture their father's attention.

The miniseries is a dramatisation of what could have happened behind closed doors during the later years of the media empire. Logan Ray, the toxic, foul-mouthed patriarchal figure who mirrors Murdoch's character, is a very sick man. Despite his ailing condition, he is adamant about clinging to the helm. He is connivingly undermining his children and making them fight among themselves to undermine their confidence. 

Even though Rupert Murdoch is alive in real life at 94, the filmmakers decided to kill him and make the adult children fight for control of the empire.

If viewers do not mind being bombarded with 35 hours or more of profanity-laced script, cussing and character-hurling abuses at each other, giving graphic descriptions of bizarre acts of loving and self-gratification, coitus and what a perverted mind would perform on his reproductive anatomy, be my guest and watch this miniseries.

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Baby, baby, it’s a vile world!

financialexpress.com

Society wants us to believe that it is progressive. It gives the impression of being open to new ideas and radical changes. It uplifts us when we think outside the box and are bold enough to express the unthinkable. It encourages us to break unspoken societal barriers. In the modern era, where clicks and likes determine financial returns and the popularity of a social media channel, subscribers cheer and indirectly push the boundaries of what can be spoken and done. 

The presenter on the other end will be enveloped in the illusion that he is the most significant discovery since Columbus found the New World. This is what fame offers us: an inflated, infallible feeling that nothing can go awry. We believe that our entire fan base has our backs covered. Sadly, the opposite is true.

This, Ranbeer Allahwadia discovered the hard way. After ascending the ladder of fame through his informative podcasts and YouTube videos, he went as far as to receive national awards for being a role model to young people. His guests include high-ranking ministers, academics, and even figures of faith. 

Alongside this, he was also invited as a guest on other shows. In one reality show, Ranbeer thought he would try his hand at comedy. His choice of comedy, plagiarised from a Western sketch, turned out to be the worst decision of his career. The joke was deemed too vulgar for public consumption in India. His fall from grace was set in motion. The house of cards started crumbling. People who had initially piggybacked on his platform for public exposure and self-promotion became turncoats. They started a vile campaign against him. Left-leaning channels with opposing views to Allahbadia's revelled in the scandal. They even went so far as to dig up and analyse dirt of the past, even involving his parents. Allahabadia's parents, as gynaecologists, had an ovum donor die of Ovarian Hypersimulation Syndrome (OHSS). Suddenly, now it is a big issue to emphasise that the boy is of bad stock. No one talks about the good things he has done.

Now Ranveer stands alone out in the cold, despised by everyone, dropped by advertisers, facing interrogation and responding to legal notices. 

It is a cruel world. The very people who lift us onto the palanquin will be the same ones who lay us to rest. It merely reinforces the old adage, 'the higher the climb, the harder the fall.'

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Still a white man's burden?

BBC on Trial (Documentary; 2024)

Produced by: Global Hindu Federation

Remember when Malaysians depended on Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) for our news fix? If one remembers well, the headlines on each vernacular channel emphasised different topics to keep each ethnicity happy and give the illusion that their needs were being considered.

They would have picked this up from their colonial masters, who perfected the art of diplomacy and ruling with the doctrine of 'divide and rule'. Goebbels is not the person who invented the propaganda. It was the British and their propaganda machine, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In fact, the Germans learnt it from BBC, which was incorporated into its current form in 1927.

In the 1930s, the BBC management was singing praises of the Nazi's attempt to clear off its enemies. BBC perfected the art of choosing the perfect word to sugarcoat a potential disaster. They broadcast 24/7 in 25 languages and three bandwidths to tell the right message that their audience wanted to hear. Like the Piped Piper leading the children of Hamelin into the mountain, BBC and its propaganda news drew and killed 100 million Indians in one way or another in 40 years. BBC drew in fiction writers and performers to seduce its crowd to believe their stories. George Orwell was recruited to write scripts for the news on India.

Of late, people worldwide have to realise the BBC's nefarious agenda. With its clever play with semantics, it managed to successfully demonise people and humanise terrorists. There is an overt anti-India bias. They were quick to paint India as a ridiculous nation of poverty, ignorance and sexual perverts.

A year before Modi's third-term election, BBC thought it appropriate to bring a 20-year-old squashed conspiracy linking Modi to the 2002 Gujerat Riots. Even though the Courts investigated and cleared Modi of any wrongdoing, BBC, in its self-professed role of the bearer of the white media's burden, released its controversial documentary, 'The Modi Question'. Elsewhere, it decided to vilify Indian social fibre; BBC made a hero of an accused rapist in the 'Nirbhaya Case' by having a one-on-one interview with him after paying him handsomely.

Pandit Satish Sharma,
Interfaith Speaker and Pandit of
Dharmic traditions
Brainchild behind the documentary.

The BBC has a very unique way of whitewashing crimes of a particular community of society when it comes to people of the Indian subcontinent. In the Leicester unrest recently, there is evidence of biased reporting, painting the Islamic aggressors as victims. Even Shamima Begum, who gave up her British citizenship to fight for ISIS, is portrayed as an innocent victim. Majid Freeman, an instigator of violence and a terrorist sympathiser, is labelled as a political activist.

BBC has been a prime mover of regime changes around the world. It is said they had assisted in 42 regime changes since 1945, starting with the assassination of Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, when he nationalised British oil holdings in 1953. Their shenanigans continued with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Even though BBC is good at 'exposing' the shortcomings of third-world countries, even the post-colonial nations have leapt forward, surpassing their master; they have, within their establishment, people of questionable morals. Cases of BBC executives like Jimmy Saville and Stuart Hall getting mangled with child sexual abuse are no secret. In his capacity as the Public Prosecutor, Keir Starmer, the current PM, thought the case did not merit further action.

There are many sepoys, chronic victims of Stockholm Syndrome, who are still in awe of their former colonial masters and are under the impression the sun still has not set on the empire. They worked with local associated companies to churn out denigrating news of their own countries.

BBC has manipulated information to serve its agenda, creating division and mistrust among global audiences. It raises critical questions about the ethical responsibilities of media institutions and challenges viewers to consider whether the BBC should be held accountable for its actions. Impartial reporting is not in the equation. Their ultimate aim is to balkanise nations, making them weak and unsustainable. That is when the next wave of imperialism moves in. The concept of 'divide and rule' never left the table.

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Truth is a state of mind?

Conspiracy Theory (1997)
Director: Richard Donner

In the pre-internet era, Malaysian coffee shops were fertile grounds for conspiracy theories. At a time when all news was coming out in print and the airwaves were tightly controlled, information was a priced commodity. Everyone had their version of what was going on beyond the iron curtain of bureaucracy, of what was reported and what was not. 

Surprisingly, at least in Malaysia, all the coffee shop banter that would initially be denied by the powers that be will turn out to be true. Investigational journalism is better done by the single cup of coffee purchaser sitting in the shop the whole day than by people trained and paid to do the reporting job. 

In the infancy age of the internet, in the early 1990s, internet buffs scrambled to be on the mailing list of MGG Pillai's discussion forum, Sang Kancil. His brand of hard-hitting fire brand exposè journalism excited young minds who were quite fed up with paternalistic information dispersal. Some of his reports were so unbelievably accurate, as if he had peeked into all governmental secret documents. A great vacuum was left after his demise in 2006. It was indeed a sad day for journalism. The hole was soon filled by Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), who, probably with his lineage with the royalties, may be privy to much-privileged information. 

RPK did such a good job that he landed on the wrong side of the law several times. Over time, he became so controversial that people wondered whose side he was on. 

Sadly, with so much digital exposure these days, we are still trying to figure out what is real news and what is fake. Those who do not conform to the mainstream narrative are quickly labelled conspiracy theorists. Despite everything being at our disposal, we are still left as confused as ever. Alternative news still turns out to be accurate, as it was before. Nothing has really changed. 

This 1997 obscure film tells the tale of a taxi driver who is termed a lunatic who goes on broadcasting about a grand governmental plan to kill and destroy. In between, he is also apprehended by psychologists or government agents who feed him hallucinogens and try to extract information from him. To a certain extent, we, the viewers, are also confused about what is real and what the cab driver's imagination is. In that city, he is trying to contact a lawyer with the Justice Department. Long story short, the cab driver is correct. He is part of the US mind-control team of the State, which is programmed to carry out secret missions for the government. 

Truth is a state of mind?

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A case quite bizarre

Indrani Mukerjea: Buried Truth (2024)
Docu-series, 4 episodes.

From the land of the Veda and the Arthashashtra comes an intriguing case of a missing person, which has remained unresolved to date. In the land that believes that every nasty action has a compelling reaction with the belief that no evil deed will not go unpunished in this birth or next, perhaps punishment could only be meted out in the next life.

In 2008, The Wall Street Journal hailed Indrani Mukerjea as one of the 50 ladies to watch, and India conferred her with the award 'Uttar Ratna' for her outstanding work in the art, media, and broadcasting sector. By 2015, she had her hands full fending off money laundering charges and fighting a murder charge.

Her past is blurry for a start. Born Pori Dora, her actual birthdate is queried. In her early teenage years in Guwahati, Assam, she accused her father of sexually molesting her. She went off to Shillong, Meghalaya, for studies, where she met her first husband, Siddharta Das, with whom she had two kids, Sheena and Mikhail. She soon left her kids with her parents to move to Kolkata in 1990. In Kolkata, she married her second husband, Sanjeev Khanna, to have her third child, Vidhie. Vidhie is the main narrator in the documentary. Somewhere along the way, there is even a mention that Sheena could be the product of Indrani's father's despicable act.

In 2001, Indrani moved to Mumbai, where she met Peter Mukerjea. Her recruitment company became a hit, and she dabbled in the media industry. Together with Peter, they climbed the corporate ladder to become prominent figures in Indian media. She was the CEO of a media mogul.

Her daughter, Sheena, appeared in the Mukerjea fold in 2006. Indrani introduced her to her new family as her sister! Sheena also got herself embroiled in the Mumbai corporate rat race. She apparently had a relationship with Peter's son from a previous marriage. Indrani's side was resistant to this relationship.

By 2009, Indrani was pretty much out of the media limelight as her corporate rule went south with accusations of appropriation and money laundering. She left India to live in the UK.

In 2012, Sheena disappeared without a trace. Everybody assumed Sheena had run away from her fiance and had probably gone incognito. Three years later, Indrani was arrested for the murder. Indrani's driver admitted to having helped her to kill and bury Sheena. The driver let her to the remains, but DNA evidence from the body was rejected for technical reasons. The case was twisted, and Indrani, Peter, and the driver got out on bail.

The docu-series is so twisted. It smells of sensationalism and trial by the media. Nobody shows sensitivity to the deceased or the family in the programme. I guess it does not matter as the accused is family (the mother killing her firstborn). The family gave the green light to tell their side of the story, having been in the media, knowing how well media can spin the truth, of which Indrani had been part and that the case is still ongoing; Indrani and the family should know better. Perhaps they are just garnering public sentiments before the case gets mentioned again.

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An open file?

The Stranger (Miniseries, S1,E1-8; 2020)

A cleric politician in the Malaysian Parliament once called for the ruling country to impose stricter control on what children can access on their digital devices. He said that he currently kept on receiving X-rated messages on his phone and went on to rant about how easy it is to access porn online. He went on to say he shuddered to think what the inquisitive minds be up to.

Another politician from the opposite side saw this as a low-hanging fruit and decided to capitalise on it for brownie points. He seized the moment. The second politician tried to educate the first one that what appears on our digital devices is determined by our usage. The algorithm suggests what we should watch based on our previous consumption. In other words, the first politician must be an avid consumer of smut to be inundated with so many invitations to adult sites.

That is it. We think we know everything about the person sitting beside us or under the same roof. Wait for a rude awakening. The person you think you know may actually be a total stranger, managing an alternative life in an alternative universe with an alternative identity!

It may be true that it is pretty easy to lead a double life in this time and age. With so much emphasis and demand for privacy, even among close family members, one can get away with planning, executing and getting away with even murder. Everything is hidden under the cloak of secrecy and the Data Protection Act. So we think!

That is, until someone with the know-how, the access to and data of information, sounds and visuals. That, too, will depend on whose hands these data fall on. Fall into rogue hands, and it could be a source of a lucrative income to them.

This miniseries tells an exciting story involving three seemingly unrelated incidents. A schoolboy is found unconscious in the woods. A well-liked schoolteacher goes missing. She is later accused of mishandling her school football team's finances. And periodically, a stranger appears in places that would least expect her to be, to pass sensitive, deep secrets to people. Interesting 4/5.

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The press feeds the public what they want, scoops!

Vadhandhi: The Fable of Velonie (Rumours; 2022)
Writer & Director: Andrew Louis

Everybody talks about wanting to know the truth. That the truth should prevail. That the truth will punish the wrongdoer. That the truth will eventually come out, sooner or later. There is a pressing need to discover the truth so that things can be put right so that man-made law can mete justice. Really?

Firstly, truth is a double-edged sword. One man's perspective of the truth can be another's blatant lie. Seeing is not believing. How often our senses have played tricks on us. So often, we have been convinced by suggestion. The police can tell that eyewitness accounts can only be believed so much. We are prejudiced by appearance, race, background and stereotyping.

Then some are so cocksure about something. Perhaps they have a vested interest or want to be in the limelight, to feel important. Maybe they like to steer the investigation the wrong way because they are involved somehow. 

Remember those who spin rumours just for the kick of it. They capture our sense of curiosity to yarn tales of lies and half-truths to spice up a tragedy. Maybe they are looking for clickbait. Little do they care how negatively it would affect the grieving or affected party.

In this age of breaking news, the press would go to all lengths, low down and dirty, to scoop out scandals to whet the viewer's appetites. There is a demand for these. As we increasingly become desensitised by gore and horror, the more demand for sensationalism. 

So when a pretty young thing is found strangulated at a film site, everyone gets curious. Everyone has their theory of what actually happened. The media is out to churn everything in the name of the public wanting to know. The police are on tenterhooks as pressure mounts to solve the case and find the perpetrator. In the meantime, the grieving party has to endure the hopelessness of losing a loved one, harassment of the press, accusatory fingers of the judging eyes and exposure of family wrongdoings that were kept under wraps for so long. The victim and her family are trialled in media from the public lens. In the meantime, fiction writers start their storytelling trade under the guise of wanting to discover the truth. At the same time, they do not fail to mention that their story is based on actual events. Just how much it is related to true events is where it gets blurred.

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

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