Generational clash?

Hi Mom, Dad! What's Up? 

Greeja De Silva

The moment Elvis Presley went on stage gyrating his pelvis, belting his then-new number 'Hound Dog', the elders went white. To them, his suggestive moves were the mark of the beginning of the end, Armageddon. Nearly seventy years on, we are, however, still very much rocking.

Ironically, almost all toddlers make Superman out of their fathers. This admiration slowly dwindles as puberty hits when opinions about the perspective of life clash. They grow apart with the passing years only for the toddler, now a middle-aged father of an adult child himself, to realise the 'Superman-Ubermench' capabilities of his old man. 

All these are nothing new but generational gaps. The generation next looks at their predecessors as obsolete and the elders at their offspring as decadent and self-destructive. Even Socrates must have thought the same of the youngsters of his times that he thought his death by hemlock would awaken them. 

Of course, we can now point all these clashes to the relatively incomplete development of the frontal lobes on one side and the genuine desire to impart life lessons to the kids on the other. The kids are overwhelmed with unabated exposure to the outside world and the unfettered ability to verbalise their thoughts.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Cursed for causing divisiveness between generations, it has also found its uses to unite them. Like the Elvis moment, the elders viewed unrestricted access to information as dangerous. Detractors to this assert that the 'Superman' wisdom will prevail. It is envisaged that the cyber-savvy generation will realise that great powers come with big responsibilities. Hopefully, a steady state will prevail.  

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Can't beat the original!

Laal Singh Chaddha (Hindi;2022)

Bollywood version of 'Forest Gump'

Director: Advait Chandan

Even before Aamir Khan's latest film made it to the silver screen, a large portion of India's population, or at least those vocal on social media platforms, went on a crusade demanding its boycott. The threads #banLallSinghChaddha and #BoycottLaalSinghChaddha gave the impression that the movie was demeaning to the Indian psyche. 

It all stamped from the time following the events of the Gujerat riots. Aamir Khan, an essential icon in the average day-to-day Indian's going on, as all Bollywood of is and movie stars are, made a public statement that he, a Muslim, and his then-wife felt unsafe in intolerant India. Khan later earned the public ire in 2020 when he was photographed with the First Lady of Turkey, Emine Erdogan, after filming in Turkey. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, at that time, was quite vocal about the aberration of article 370 in Kashmir and had clearly stated his pro-Pakistani stance on the Kashmir issue.

The keyboard warriors had all the ammunition to run down Aamir Khan. They thought his previous film 'PK' denigrated the Hindus. Then someone suggested that Aamir Khan was not alone. It seemed that the whole Bollywood mafia was concerted in bringing the values Indians held dear to them. The platform was set to bash Bollywood and the first families of Bollywood (i.e. actors who made it big due to their sheer family connections). Films that glorified India, promoted nationalism and tried to re-narrate India's past history were given publicity and feted.

People may say that cancel culture and mob mentality are just rearing their ugly heads in public space. They are telling Aamir Khan and the likes, with their newfound Indian nationalism as the world becomes more and more inclusive, to mind their words if they wish to make money out of them. They would not continue taking all the Indian bashing anymore.

Perhaps because Netflix and the other OTTs just opened the floodlights to other new non-Bollywood mafia-linked sons and daughters of actors, people have realised that they do not need Bollywood to feel good. People have also discovered that a wealth of gems are being churned out of other Indian language cinemas, especially in the South. 

To be fair, this film 'Laal Singh Chaddha' is not all bad and demeaning. The only slacking thing is it is a bit draggy. If one were to nitty pick, one could say the film defames jawans (warriors) by implying that even a mentally challenged individual can be deployed as a soldier. This is, of course, a stark in the Vietnam War, which the original film depicted when the US Army had its hands full replenishing the numbers who kept returning in body bags. Uncle Sam took in all!

Laal Singh's characterisation appears too familiar. We think we saw him in 'PK'. And the frequent 'Mmming….' gets a bit annoying after some time. Diehard Bollywood would be pleasantly surprised by a digitally de-aged Shahrukh Khan appearing in a cameo role as a fledgeling newbie trying to break into the silver screen. 

On a positive note, LSC excelled in creating an emotion that connected with viewers. The narrative gave a scroll down memory lane of many significant events that happened in India in recent years. The outdoor shooting is breathtaking. The idea of showing India's different skyline must have gone through Aamir Khan's mind when he saw Forrest Gump start running the whole span of the USA. Hence Khan must have bought the rights to remake the movie. 

It may not be groundbreaking, but LSC is indeed a wholesome, feel-good movie that the family could watch together without being encountered in embarrassing adult moments. 3/5.

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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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Convenient partnership?

Mandi (Market Place, Hindi; 1983)
Directed by: Shyam Benegal

It was a time when Bollywood could not go wrong. With their vast array of capable actors, there controlled the narrative. Even though initially, Bollywood catered for the masses. It tried to put forward the leftists' agenda, and the rest of the population would just feed off their hands.

So when Bollywood made a movie out of a classic satirical novel with prolific and talented actors of that era, the likes of Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Om Puri and Amrish Puri, it became an instantaneous national and international hit. It has a string of accolades under its belt to boast.

Things have turned 180 degrees since OTT platforms democratized movie releases. It seems that the Bollywood mafias are struggling to produce even a single hit. All their recent releases have tanked repeatedly. Conversely, unknown newcomers often shine at the top.

This movie takes a sarcastic look at the unholy alliance between the madame of a house of disrepute with the police and people in power. Members of an NGO are up in arms against a brothel in the middle of a town. They want it closed. The politicians are looking at its real estate value. In the midst of it all, two of the brothel girls perform at the landlord's son's engagement ceremony. The potential groom is all smitten with the performer and is lovestruck, wanting to elope with the callgirl! 

An interesting movie that takes a swipe at the convenient coalition between the oldest and the second oldest profession in the world.

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A wounded mother

The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

Director: Guy Hamilton

Gene Tierney was acclaimed for her great beauty in Hollywood. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 and even had a brief affair with JFK before he had political ambitions. After a performance at a World War 2 fundraiser event, she was kissed by a fan convalescing from rubella. Unbeknownst to her, she was in her early stage of pregnancy. She went on to deliver a baby with multiple birth defects due to congenital rubella syndrome. Gene Tierney spent the rest of her life emotionally disturbed caring for her baby. When Agatha Christie read about the actress in 1962, her creative juices must have worked overtime to imagine the feelings of a grieving mother.

Gene Tierney

Of course, there cannot be Agatha Christie's whodunnit with no murders. 

Ms Marple, in 1953, is residing in a small village in the English countryside. A film crew comes to the village to do some shooting. In midst of all the excitement, the villagers also witness a couple of murders. Ms Marple, with the help of her 'favourite' nephew from Scotland Yard, gets to the bottom of it all.

The movie saw the appearance of many stalwarts of yesteryears in the twilight of their careers. It saw Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak. Angela Lansbury was there as Ms Marple. Lansbury's career was, of course, still flying high, and she went on to complete 12 seasons of 'Murder, She wrote' from 1984 to 1996.

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The role women play?

Uski Roti (Your Bread, Punjabi; 1969)
Direction: Mani Kaul

A discussion came up with a friend the other day. Rama and Sita are hailed as exemplary beings who lived to the expectations of how a human should live on Earth. Take the perspective of Sita. A princess by birth, not exposed to the rumble and tumble of living in the wild, had no choice but to follow her husband, Rama, when the King decreed that he should spend 14 years of exile in the jungle. Playing the role of a good wife, she just followed without any opposition. 

Through no fault of hers, she had to endure the kidnapping and incarceration in Lanka. She did not develop Stockholm Syndrome but stayed steadfast that her beau would save the day. When she was eventually rescued and finally returned to Ayodhya, she was not hailed as a good wife. She was instead used as a bad example when a dhoby refused to accept his wayward wife back to fold after being caught in a possible remorseful affair.

Rama, living up to the role of a King, and Sita, the symbol of a chaste Queen, had to endure tests of fidelity. Sita took all these in stride. When a pregnant Sita was sent off to the jungles a second time, her thoughts were only about who would perform her wifely duties in her absence. It seems that she had no resentment against the King for the turmoil she had to endure in the name of royal reputation. Such is said to be the role of a good Indian wife - to trust that the husband would do the correct thing for the household and its family members. Of course, neither everyone can be Rama nor can everyone be a Sita!

Fast forward to the present. A modern person cannot stomach all this bunkum. To him or her, individual liberty is prime. Individual rights, freedom of expression and non-conformity to traditional, seemingly archaic, unscientific dogma are essential. Maybe in that way, this movie highlights the patriarchal nature of our societies and how females have to play the part of a quiet wife. This can be quite challenging when a traditional society expects a female member of a community to be seen, not heard. She is expected to perform her preset duties and not question or give opinions! But then, detractors would assert that eventually, the wayward husband came back to his senses, and that is the role of a wife, a stabilising figure.

This 1969 award-winning new-wave cinema movie from the land of Kamasutra is a non-linear presentation of a tale of philandering inter-city bus driver, Sucha Singh, and his obedient wife, Balo. The wife faithfully prepares his daily supply of meals to pass to him when he passes the village bus stop. Sucha Singh is a creep. He comes home only once a week. He spends all the time immersed in the pleasure of alcohol, gambling and his mistress.

Balo, who lives with her younger sister, is quite aware of her two-timing husband. She hangs on, maybe due to financial dependence or avoiding the stigma of being a divorcee or just hoping that he will repent. At the same time, Balo has to fend off an aggressor from her sister. 

In this profoundly slow-moving presentation which focuses a lot on inanimate objects and body parts rather than on faces, we get a flip flop between the present and past of what happens in Balo and Sucha. A simple story that brings back the memory of our past when days felt like longer than 24 hours and a year felt like a lifetime!

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Nostalgia is not a bad word!

von Trapp family

More often than not, I have been told right on my face not to live in the past. I have been cajoled into coming out occasionally, taking a depth of fresh air and smelling the roses. They fear I may soon become an ancient relic that only deserves to be admired in the museum. They ask me to burst my comfortable bubble of the past, leave the sunrise and head towards newer horizons. 

They even tell me that 'nostalgia' is a negative word. The suffix 'algia' denotes pain for a reason. Not too long ago, the term 'nostalgia' was a medical term used interchangeably with melancholy and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

So, if I were to believe all that was told to me, nostalgia would be avoided at all costs. I think nostalgia in the modern context is more romantic, re-imagining a time if it actually did when things were hunky-dory, and the world was safe. All these are, of course, mere bunkum. We were just too naive to realise that evil was lurking right under our noses at all times.

Nostalgia is not a bad word; this I realised during my last visit to Austria. Imagine a country just living in the memory of its glorious past. Austria is a country that thrives on the glory of its historical past. Its selling points are the laurels of the House of Hasburgh through the times of the Austria-Prussian and Austria-Hungarian Empires, its glorious musical culture and more recently, the razzmatazz of Hollywood's 'Sound of Silence'.

The brutality of imperialism brought with its enormous amount of sorrow, pain and loss of lives. Nevertheless, its negativity seems to have been cancelled with the so-called 'civilisation' it brought. The only trouble is that nothing civil was done in the process. The victors justified their actions by scribing and immortalising their version of the truth. The 'real truth' remains buried behind with the corpses and unheard screams of the fallen.

The victors proclaimed that, and that is proof of modernity. Pop sprang the gargantuan monuments to boast of their greatness. Their leaders' fondness became the trademark of the kingdom. Musicians who jumped to the beck and call of the victors became national heroes. Mozart came to be worshipped as a child prodigy composer.

In the same vein, the German's failed attempt at creating the Third Reich adds to the world's positive narrative. At a time when Hollywood was controlling how the world should think, the mega-blockbuster 'The Sound of Music' came to the fore. This coming-of-age plus anti-Nazi film became part and parcel of baby boomers in their formative years. Capitalising on this nostalgia, recreating an alternative universe of the doe-eyed teenage that never exists, Austria continues prospering by selling dreamers this dream. They proudly claim an annual inflow of 3 million tourists to visit and re-live the life of the von Trapp household.

The country thrives on nostalgia. The nation lives in the memory of the past to plan for the future. Nostalgia cannot be all bad.

Outside Von Trapp villa

Sankt Gilgen - part of Sound of Music tour

Salzburg after dark.

The fields scream to the sound of music.

I 

That will bring us back to 'Do'.

Recreating the royal courtyard. Even musicians and composers have subtle ways of showing the monarchs that all is not well in paradise. 'The Marriage of Figaro' showcasing servants rising up and outwitting their masters – outraged the aristocracy. 

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