The blurring of real and reel life!

Wandavision (Miniseries, Season 1; 2021)
Disney + (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Now that memory and brain activity can theoretically be digitised and stored, and our cinematic presentation, (i.e. movies and TV shows) are essentially data that can be modulated and transmitted from port to port, nothing will stop these two forms of data (series of 1's and 0's) from intermingling. 

With our fixation with Tinseltown and penchant to immerse into instant visual gratification added with the obsession with having our TV/computer displays on 24/7, we may want to run our lives like they do on the silver screen. But, unfortunately, nothing will stop what is real and what is fake, fuelled by a fetish for hyper-reality, virtual reality, and obsession to experience in 3D and VR imaging.

How often have we seen children expecting their parents to be like those depicted on American sitcoms? How they wished their parents were cool like them too? When the hard knocks of life hit them hard at their tender spots, how they would have yearned for real life to be as easy as in the reel life? If only the script of our lives is written to our liking and draw to a conclusion at the end of the preset screening times, they would like to have. With the relevant technology at their disposal, it is only a matter of time, if they only could, that they would transform their worldly existence into the make-believe world of filmdom.

Elizabeth Olsen as
Scarlet Witch / Wanda

This must have been the premise to Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch turned to after her defeat in Avengers: Endgame, and she lost the love of her life, Vision. With her telekinetic and reality-altering abilities, she recreated her comfort zone that she remembered watching all through her formative years in Sokovia when love was in the air, and her family was intact. She took over a suburban town named Westview, turned its occupants into TV sitcom characters. She created a robust electromagnetic fence around the perimeter to ward off the FBI and SWORD. Wanda wrote the script of a narrative where she and Vision lead a man-and-wife life in a setting ala sitcom like 'Dick Van Dyke Show', 'Bewitched', 'Mary Tyler Show', 'I Love Lucy', and many more. As time went on, the setting changed to fit shows of the 70s and 80s - 'Brady Bunch', 'Full House', "Malcolm in the Middle', etc.

All the while, the FBI and SWORD teams are cracking their minds trying to infiltrate the perimeter. Then, finally, Wanda world of make-believe slowly crumbled, ending with a spectacular display of pyrotechnics and prowess of computer graphic imaging. 

Even though the series is labelled as the first season, it appears to have a nice ending at Ep #9 and segue nicely to fit Marvel's upcoming superhero offering 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness'. A second season is unlikely.

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The go-to fiction of yesteryear

Brothers Karamazov (1958)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's writings during the Russian Golden Age of Literature have been referred to as a go-to place by many great icons of the world. At times of uncertainties, Einstien used to read Dostoyevsky for clarity. Nietzsche defined him as the only psychologist that he needed. Dostoyevsky inspired many writers like Hemmingway and Kafka. Akira Kurosawa made movies based on one of his stories (The Idiot). Osho (aka Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh) described the profound moral and philosophical messages in Dostoyevsky's 'Brother Karamozov' comparable to the Bible.

This story tells the story of Fyodor Karamazov, a high spirited widowed father who enjoys the more beautiful things in life - wine, music and women, especially a lady, Grushenka, who runs a tavern. Fyodor has four adult sons, each with their own personality traits. He is very tight-fisted with his money. Dimitri, the eldest, an ex-army, has a penchant for money and also an eye on Grushenka. But Dimitri has a suitor, Katya, a rich heiress who is rooting for him but he is not interested. The second son, Ivan, is an intellectual, a newspaperman and an atheist. He has the soft spots for Katya but sadly unrequited. The third son, Alexi, is a priest who is the peacemaker of the family who sees the good in everybody. The last one is actually Fyodor's illegitimate and epileptic son, Smerdyakov. He functions as the butler and yearns for his father unconditional love but sadly what he gets in return are hurls of insult.

Smerdyakov plans to murder his father, executes it but circumstances caused Dimitri to be accused of it. Ivan, who knew of Smerdyakov's intention but did not do anything to stop it is made to feel guilty. Meanwhile, Alexi is holding the whole family on a tightrope. Grushenka and Katya show their ugly side to win their love.

It is said that the film failed to capture the intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual essence of the book. This is expected as it is not possible to show all the emotions and the soliloquy that occurs within oneself in this two-hour presentation.

Many of these topics are dealt with superficially to maintain its entertainment value.

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More than a pretty face!

Bombshell: The Story of Hedy Lamarr (2017, Documentary)

“Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” Hedy Lamarr. 

I bet you did not know that the image of Snow White that we have in our minds, thanks to Disney's classic cartoons, is based on the features of the then dubbed as the most beautiful woman of the world, Hedy Lamarr. Even Catwoman's representation is of hers. There was a time when every actress wanted to spot her similar hairstyle, centre-parted dark hair. Beneath the beauty that she possessed, there remained an inventive scientific mind waiting to create something new.

This Viennese daughter of a Jewish banker, Hedy Kiesler, was a free-spirited lass when at the spur of the moment acted in a dirty German film, 'Ektase' which bewildered her the rest of her adult and professional life. She married an arms merchant (to the Nazis and Mousillini) soon after her fame at Austrian movie set later. Things took a turn after Hitler and his Jewish-hating propaganda took centre stage. Her father, her idol, succumbed to a heart ailment. She staged an escape plan for herself. Swapping clothes with her maid and stitching her money and jewellery in her tunic, she made a dash out of Vienna on a bicycle.

Hedy Lamaar ©Pinterest

She landed in London where Louis B Meyer (of MGM) was scouting for talents. Contracted, she made her debut in a 1938 Hollywood film, Algiers. Struggling through the stereotype that the cinema world gave her as an exotic seductress and the ghost of Ektase, she had her ups and downs. Despite her gruelling schedule in Hollywood, in the nights, she worked in her small lab at home.

It was at this juncture that her full potential as an inventor came to fore. She is said to have given Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire inventor, the idea for a brand new design for the wings of his planes. During the heights of WW2, when most Hollywood actresses were content with making special appearances to entertain the US Army and to sell War Bonds, she and a composer-pianist, George Antheil, were busy inventing. When the Navy was paralysed by the German U-boats which could jam the Naval torpedoes, they came up with the idea of a 'frequency hopping' system which could bypass the German interference. They patented this invention, but the Navy was not keen to use this design for a non-military layperson.

Her beauty was also her gilded cage. Perhaps, the feminist she was and the intelligence that she possessed proved too overwhelming to many of her partners in her many (six) failed marriages. She is best remembered as Delilah in 1945 'Samson and Delilah'. Her mega production, The Loves of Three Queens, could not be distributed as no distributors wanted to take it.
Her later life was a sad one riddled with court cases, depression, drugs, plastic surgeries and more surgeries. She spent her last few years as a recluse.

Her 'frequency hopping system' is the basis of GPS, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi and military satellite technologies. In the later years, she was given due recognition for her discovery.

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The early silver screen moghuls

Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream (Documentary; 1998)



 The main driving point of this documentary is that the American Dream that Hollywood is trying to propagate is no American invention. It is the message brought in by a few Jewish immigrants who escaped the pogroms in the shtetls (Jewish village) of Eastern Europe. They invented Hollywood and owned the six leading studios in Hollywood in the 1920s. The message that they try to disseminate are their own experiences; Harry Warner and his three brothers who brought sound to the motion pictures; Samuel Goldwyn @ Goldfische, the biggest of the independent producers;  Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Studios; Louis B. Mayer, founder of MGM; Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount; and William Fox of 20th Century Fox. They all came from an area within a 500-mile radius area in Europe, between Poland, Hungary and Russia. They end up living in Los Angeles within a 15-mile vicinity.

After leaving the tyranny of persecution and discrimination against the sin of being born Jew, they left their homeland in the heart of Europe to seek newer pastures in the New World. Here, the ghost of their past re-surfaced. The American public was not welcoming of their Jewish newcomers. They were ostracised and were discriminated against in fields of banking, business and education. Growing up in the ghettos, these enterprising people persevered. They moved to West Coast with their risk-taking attitude to reinvent themselves. Within a generation, as the joke went, they progressed from “from Poland to polo in one generation,”!

Outwardly these re-invented American exude a nationalist persona. They promote allegiance to the American flag and to whatever the founding fathers stand for. Deep within themselves and their household, they stick steadfastly to their religious beliefs. In their movies, they portray images that behind in their villages. The suffering of the little people is seen as the pilgrims hunted by Native American bandits, a robust maternal character out to defend the family, the looting, the burning in the early Westerns are all reminiscence of their past lives. At the same time, the films try to create a new American society which is more democratic, where blacks, Jews and Gentiles are treated as equal. In real life then, that was far from reality.

The story of the golden era tried very hard to fit Jews in the American society. The process of assimilation had begun. Interracial marriages were depicted as acceptable norms. Came World War 2, these silver screen Moghuls paid their national service. They infused patriotic values in their stories to keep the fighting spirits high.  Washington was working hand-in-glove towards this end. Making movies about Russia, who were their allies, was acceptable. The first generation had become a power to reckon with and could walk shoulder to shoulder with the WASPs (wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), finally.


The dreams of these moguls fell apart soon after WW2. They were accused of thinly disguising communists values in their presentations. The witchhunt for un-American activities had begun through the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC). Some say that the outsiders (as the WASP always considered them to be) never really recovered from this blow. Actors and directors lost their jobs. Others lost the zest to fight.

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