Papa, don't preach!

Call Jane (2022)

Director: Phyllis Nagy

This is the world we live in, contradictory. Outwardly, everyone seems to portray an image of being pious, virtuous and conforming to the teachings of his religion. He claims that Man's laws must be the ones sanctioned by God and would all out to see to this. In private, however, his moral standards go out of the window. Regardless of what believers say, religions are oppressive against the female gender. The female members are always blamed when the question of vice is discussed, even though it is obvious that we need two to tango. Even Nature is unkind. The female population always become the receptacle for exchanging biological fluids. No matter what the trans people may say, one needs a uterus to carry a pregnancy. Biology does not give in to social demands. One can call a spade a shovel; it still picks up what it is supposed to pick up.

Pro-choice protestors in 1972.

This story tells about a time before Roe vs Wade when termination was illegal in many U.S. states. Joy, the wife of a criminal lawyer, enjoying the world of the upper middle class, finds herself in limbo when she becomes pregnant and complicated with cardiomyopathy. Even though her obstetrician feels therapeutic abortion is justified, the hospital board does not allow it. So Joy has to have a procedure done after seeing an advertisement bill on an electrical pole.

Joy realises that a group of feminists running a well-organised, safe abortion clandestine clinic. She recognises a massive demand for such services. Joy is sucked into the whole set-up. After discovering that the doctor running the clinic was a quack, Joy learned the procedure and started performing termination herself. 

The story is based on actual events. A group of ladies got together to help those caught in unwanted pregnancies, rape victims, out-of-wedlock conceptions, and grand multiparity. In their times, they had induced 11,000 over abortions without a single complication. Their work became redundant when the U.S. Supreme Court made the landmark decision in Roe vs Wade in 1973 to rule that the Constitution of the United States generally protects a pregnant individual's liberty to have an abortion.

Discussions on abortions are problematic. On one end, society valued life simultaneously with sexual liberation. Sex creates life no matter how foolproof contraception is. Failure means life without choice, and one has to deal with it. How? Should pro-choice or pro-life prevail. One has to take responsibility for personal choices and not depend on the State to babysit every time. Actions have consequences. 

Members of the Jane 1972

Whether abortion is correct or the individual's right is still ongoing. The combatant stance between the pro-choice and pro-life factions will not abate anytime soon. It becomes uglier when accusations of the earlier abortion clinic actually having eugenics and subtle genocide. Planned Parenthood was not to limit families but to limit the propagation of non-whites worldwide, it seems. 

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Which is more newsworthy?

Sometime last week, a submersible (a titanium-carbon fibre-made mini-submarine, christened Titan) commissioned to investigate the remains of the Titanic went into trouble. A catastrophic implosion is said to have instantaneously killed the five aboard. Each had sent about $250 000 to get 40,000 ft below sea level to catch a glimpse of the ill-fated ship. The dead ranged from wealthy businessmen to adventure explorers. A few days later, a Greek boat carrying hundreds of refugees from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Palestine submerged off the coast of Libya. 

The papers went agape with moving stories of economic refugees picking up the pieces and risking their lives for a better life in Europe. At the same time, the mass media has also been accused of paying more attention to the five victims of the Titanic sub rather than the refugee boat accident that swallowed more than a hundred lives. 

Critics assert that life is precious, whether the victim is rich or poor, educated or otherwise. Unfortunately, life does not work like that. It is pretty naive to insist that a homeless vagabond should be accorded the same level of treatment as the CEO of a multinational company. At the risk of sounding unkind, the reality is that the latter will contribute back to society, whereas the former will just sponge its resources. But hey, he could have a veteran, a professional who had fallen from grace or whatnot. But such is life. 

The communists and the religious will insist that all men are created equal, but in reality, some animals are more equal than others. When the shove comes to the push, hierarchy does exist. 

For example, when a destitute in Saint Theresa’s sanatorium has chest pain, she is offered prayers and paracetamol. When Mother Theresa herself has chest discomfort, an appointment at Harley Street Cardiology Clinic is made for her immediately. 

Looking at the two maritime mishaps above, one refers to the failure of mankind’s engineering marvel. All the years of research, experimentation and trial runs have led to this. The Titanic, another engineering, supposed proof of an unsinkable oceanliner, went down tamely on its maiden voyage. Just when the researchers thought they could have a peek into what could have gone wrong, now this. Naturally, a post-mortem of the failure of human endeavours excites many. 

Conversely, the refugee crisis denotes political failure. We deserve the government we choose. If millions of people within a vicinity cannot agree on how they want the country to be, they should not be playing victimhood. Politics is what people decide for themselves. Others cannot meddle. The rest of the world has enough problems, and now, the refugee crisis. The experience of many developed countries with the waves of immigrants over the last twenty years could have been anything but pleasing. Refugees, upon acceptance, have abused the system. Many of their siblings have yet to really integrate into the system. Some are hellbent on biting the hands that fed them. The host countries have never been the same since.

It is understandable why one news presides over the other in importance. 

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Without mercy, man is like a beast

Sansho the Bailiff (山椒大夫, Japanese; 1954)
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

At the outset, we are told the story occurred in "an era when mankind had not yet awakened as human beings." I pictured that time can any time in Man's history. We just have yet to awaken. We can scream all we want that all Men are created equal in the image of God and whatnot, but the fact is that people always try to dominate each other. Humans always try to be one up against their neighbour and, if possible, push him down an imaginary hierarchy.

Even before the mass transatlantic migration of slaves from Africa to the New World, slavery was already very much alive in every civilisation. There was a penchant for white slaves as brown people (read Arabic) prospered. The Vikings and Barbers were famous for the trade of white slaves. Some were captured crew members of small ship-jacked vessels. Others were bundled up when pirates landed on shores to snap up unassuming bystanders. There are stories of pirates picking men off English coasts at late as the 16th century.

Malik Ambar

Even within communities, having slaves became a norm as society started having more disposable income. The darker-skinned or the economically disadvanced always get trapped in slavery. As spoils of war, the conquered are enslaved. One can safely say all civilisations had some kind of slave community. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Muslim Empire, the Indians and the European colonial masters all had them. Perhaps, only the Harrapan society escape such stereotyping. Excavation of Harrapan remains revealed no structures denying hierarchical arrangements in their architecture. Cyrus the Great is said to be the first leader to have given his slaves and workers wages.

History tells of an Ethiopian slave, Malik Ambar, who was sold off as a slave after his territory was conquered by enemy factions and landed in Jeddah. He converted to Islam and reached the Deccan plains as a slave soldier/mercenary. He got embroiled in local politics,  was a threat to the Mughal Empire and eventually became the Ahmadnagar Sultanate's ruler. His descendants integrated into the complex Indian diaspora. 

Domestic helper abuse in Malaysia.

As the world progressed, people looked at slavery as barbaric and felt they needed change. Change they made, only in cosmesis. Slavery took different names; bonded labour, indentured servants, foreign maids, unskilled workers, etcetera.

In modern times, most religions agree that enslaving someone is not permitted. Perhaps, only the leaders of the Religion of Peace have not unequivocally condemned slavery. In their faith, the non-believers are of the same standing as the slaves. They are serfs meant to serve the believers. Through conversion, they attain equal status with the rest.

The Climatic 'Si Tanggang' scene!

Even in this age and time, we read reports of employers keeping their domestic helpers under the chain and lock for various offences, no different from the transatlantic slave trade and or slave markets in the Ottoman Empire. That begs the question of whether we are or will we ever be 'awakened'?

This is another classic from Japanese cinema. Set in 11th-century medieval Japan, an aristocrat is disposed of by pirates. His wife and children scurry to safety after the aristocrat is exiled. The wife is separated from her two kids. The wife is sold off into prostitution, and the children are enslaved. The melancholic film tells how the son eventually meets his mother.

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Life is a battlefield!

My body and mind went overdrive as things typically do while partaking in one of those age-defying mindless Sunday morning recreational run-cycle-run combo of Powerman Malaysia 2023 Edition. Staying mindful of the traffic flow of fellow madmen, the condition of the roads, my heart rate, race timing, the remaining distance to cover and gears, I had my hands figuratively full on top of everything else I was doing.

Behind it all, buffering silently in the background, basking in the inebriation of all sanguineous perfusion of flurry vascular tributaries is the creative part of the brain. It wants to keep up with the rest of the body. It, too, tries its hand at neuroplasticity. It sprouts out dendrites to establish long-lost connexions. And it engages in its internal soliloquy. I just happened to be there eavesdropping the murmur. 

Life is a battlefield. In modern times, the enemies we are supposed to fight are no longer the co-creations created in His image but the one in the mirror. The demons have all gone internal, so we tell ourselves. The jihad that they were fighting to steamroll our ideology has gone underground. Now, it seems jihad refers to fighting the inner demons.

Now, we are supposed to be kind to each other, come together and feel alright. We are not supposed to be having ill feelings towards the other. Instead of all these, we should focus on fighting the inner demons that lurk within us. Then there will be heaven on Earth. 

In real life, it does not work this way. In Nature, there is a constant need to push to a higher level. It is a question of the survival of the fittest. Darwin proposed it. We condemned it but cannot sweep the reality under the carpet. 

Even as a newbie starts cycling, running or trekking, he always tries to keep up with the group's oldest and weakest link. If he can reach the stage when he can outperform the slowest of the pack, he knows he has qualified to be a legitimate fellow group participant. 

You are given one life, not to brood over but to make the best

despite all the seemingly unending adversities that come and 

go. Sisyphus, given the life sentence of rolling the boulder up

the hill will have to find joy in reaching the pinnacle, 

knowing very well that the boulder will roll down and he has to

repeat the process again and again.

When training for a competition, a participant has to train with someone stronger than himself to improve. During the actual event, he has to benchmark himself against the better ones if he were to outdo himself. There is no meaning in merely pushing ourselves to improve without a yardstick to follow. In competitive mode, we look for prey, the feared 'the other' and the potentially beatable. We want to improve our standing by overtaking others, one at a time.

There is a place for active competition. The world is cruel and does not give concessions to the weak. So, affirmative action will work only in a short time. When used indiscriminately, it would be counterproductive. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times. (G. Michael Hopf)

Like it or not, we improve as a human race by challenging the status quo. Jealousy can be a healthy virtue as long as to push oneself, but not in destruction. But he would be devastated, nevertheless. As long as he knows, he will return bigger and stronger. 

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Energies calling for help?

The Black Phone (2021)
Director: Scott Derrickson

It was in the mid-70s that innocence was lost. Before this time, life on Earth was a peaceful one. Children could wander about without fear of being abducted. Ladies could go out unaccompanied. They would not end up as tomorrow's headline. And road rage was not a thing yet and be assured that Mat Rempit would not crash into your car in the dead of night, unannounced, as you scramble back home, following all the road rules, after a long day at the office.

It used to be serial killers, looneys, and UFOs only attacked America. Well, other nations have caught up too. The world is no longer a safe place. Mad people are everywhere, in every society. It is just a question of how competent the arm of the law is in that locality. With more money at their disposal, time and manpower can be put aside for that purpose. If day-to-day living is in peril, they just have to accept victims as collateral damage of changing times.

It is said that energies with unfulfilled ambitions roam around us as spirits causing 'disturbances'. Seances commonly describe them as entities yearning to fulfil their needs, not intending to scare or cause disharmony. In short, they are asking for help. We should not lose sleep over them. The correct people with sort them out.  

This film is set in 1978 when 'Happy Days' was rave and bell bottoms were sweeping the world. Many schoolchildren go missing in a Denver suburb. Finney and Gwen, children of an alcoholic single father, see their schoolmates go missing one by one. Eventually, Finney gets abducted and is kept in a basement. The basement has the bare minimum but a wall telephone. The phone is a landline, but the problem is that the line is cut. The phone still rings, and Finney manages to talk to the abducted children who are dead. Meanwhile, Gwen is having vivid dreams about the abductions.

A forgettable movie which gives the vibe of the film 'It'. 

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Indian Fables

Vetalam dan Vikramaditya (2020)
Author: Uthaya Sankar SB 

I remember a time when a newly married couple rented a room in our house. My sister and I, 4 and 6 years old, respectively, were dying to hear the wife's stories that she did tell without fail every evening, with our persuasion, of course. She had a peculiar way of making us glued to her stories. We affectionately addressed her as ‘Atteh’ (Auntie, father’s sister or maternal uncle’s wife). 

Every evening, after she had her shower as she returned from work, it was storytime. Her stories usually carried a message, and many of them were Indian folk tales, including ‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’. 

‘Vetalam and Vikramaditya’ stories always carry a moral dilemma that needs critical thinking. We were often disappointed as she never told us the answers to the questions she put forward. She would ask us to think carefully.

That is the thing about these stories. Legend has it (it is probably a historical statement now) that King Vikramaditya was a King based in Ujjain. A fun fact is that Ujiian in Madhya Pradesh is sometimes referred to as the navel of Earth or Greenwich of India. Before 1884, as per a 4th-century treatise, Ujjian was considered the prime meridian. Even today, the panchangayam (Hindu almanack) is based on Ujjian time (29 minutes behind IST).

Vikramaditya in Ujjian

Many kings took the honorary title of Vikramaditya. Hence, there was confusion about who the real Vikramaditya was. It is agreed that he probably ruled around the first century BC under the Vikrama Samrat era.

In the 'Vetalam and Vikramaditya' stories, King Vikramaditya is summoned by priests to capture a playful and sly demon from a cemetery by daybreak. The King manages to trap the demon, Vetalam. The trouble was that the talkative imp had a penchant to escape from the clutches of the King. The King was relentless, however. The demon made a deal with Vikramaditya. It would narrate stories that would need answers, to which the King had to answer. The King's head would explode if he gave the wrong, but Vethalam would escape if the answer is right.

The night goes on with Vedalam telling stories, expecting answers, the King giving the correct answer, Vethalam escaping, King capturing him again, and Vethalam starting a new story. Thus it went on the whole night. By the way, the King was not allowed to speak. It was done telepathically. Towards early morning, they had built a rapport and joined forces to crack the priests' ulterior motives.

One of the stories is similar to the story of P Ramlee's 'Keluarga 69' and K Balachander's ' Apoorva Ragam', where no answer is expected. One cannot put a name to a relationship when a King marries the daughter of a mother who marries the Prince. The offspring of the King, if it is a son, is also a stepbrother of the Prince and grandchild to the King's daughter-in-law; very confusing! 

P.S. A Tamil proverb describes a person who is unsuccessfully trying to reform as 'Vethalam recoiling into a marunga tree'.

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The joke that didn't land?

It has nothing to do with mocking the duly departed. No doubt we do not poke fun at the dead. Jocelyn Chia did not ridicule the victims who perished in MH370. She sneered at the country's citizens whose image bearer in the sky went down without a trace of existence. In the same skeet, she peeled bare the impotence of the government, which had lost in the global fight to stay prominent. Whilst the rest of the world is busy improving the saleability of its country and drawing in foreign funds, besides improving human capital and intelligence, Malaysia's leaders are content in drumming the past century's tune of race and religion. The leaders make their gullible subjects feel special when they are merely donning the Emperor's new clothes.

So when Jocelyn haughtily flaunted Singapore's first-world status after being jilted from an intimate relationship, during which the Prime Minister had cried about an uncertain future, she knew her country had done well. Speaking from a standup comedy stage in New York, embraced by the biggest economy in the world, she knows she has bragging rights. After all, the caustic world of standup comedy allows her so, burns, vulgarity, warts and all.

So the high offices of her former country have apologised. Of course, they did. They need the goodwill of their neighbour to oil the nation's machinery and food supply. More than half of the country's think tanks have roots in Malaysia anyway.

If Jocelyn Chia had mocked the falling of the Twin Towers or Pearl Harbour, the US would flip. So the IGP making an Interpol report to locate her will be about to nought. The US is not bothered about hurting the sentiments of a despotic third-world nation. It has to be seen as the purveyor of what it preaches, free speech, freedom of expression and pursuit of happiness.

It is all about playing the victimhood. It has nothing to do with sneering at something of a taboo subject. The recalcitrant son who cut off his umbilical connexion had all reasons to fail and had paradoxically proved his father wrong. Instead of crawling home all scrawny and embarrassed, poor and hungry, the rebel became more prosperous. The old folks, set in their ways, only spiralled down the path of self-aggrandisement. Excited over minor achievements, they praised themselves for newer, trivial, insignificant achievements. As if rubbing salt into an open wound, the Malaysian ringgit hits an all-time low against the Singapore dollar.

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