Rab Ne bana di jodi [ * ]

If there's a movie to dislike from start to finish, and an audience I'd have happily seen murdered, it would be this. In an almost all-male theatre of hooting, whistling local freaks, I watched the bollywood justification of our primitive, barbaric arranged marriage system. Fine, they made it for the 'masses', but this is a gold-class, fatcat 'masses' in theatres these days.

Here's a girl who's been callously forced to marry a perfect stranger on the day the love of her life dies. A typical arranged marriage of convenience results - such everyday people that they didn't even need two bollywood stars to make it into a movie.

On top of it all, this educated girl is so lacking in self-esteem she apologizes for being in mourning and proceeds to wash, clean and care for his house while the babu comes home only to eat at night.

When she meets a guy who's willing to dress up as well as she does and meet her halfway in dancing, riding, etc. she chooses him over the self-centered unchanging hubby. But in a [duh] radical decision she decides to keep the moron-hubby over the more jazzed up version. [The audience went crazy with joy at this dutiful daughter preference.;]

What makes me angrier is that so many women (who have probably had an arranged marriage) thought it was a terrific movie too - not just those guys. I guess arranged marriages are here to stay for a few centuries yet.;s

Dostana [* * * *]

It was total eye-candy. Two pumped up guys pretending to be gay and this one naive and trusting girl in skimpy clothes. (I mean ... Indian guys can't really *actually* be gay, right? lol. Such hypocrisy.)

The entire movie was about flesh, flesh, flesh. And not too unpleasantly either - youth is just about skin, and there's plenty of it available, both male and female.

That being said, I think John Abraham is just the grooviest guy EVER! for his work for the animals, his incredible eyes and sweet shy smile. *drool*!!:)))

Fashion again

[I've been troubled in my mind about the state of the world w.r.t. me. But then I'm always troubled when the moon is full.:]

I saw Fashion again. My mom wanted to see it. I'm always amazed by how clued in milady is. I understood the movie better this time around.:)

Here are some things she noticed that I hadn't:

* That fingerbowl scene (where a bf asks the girl to 'prove' her love by drinking out of his fingerbowl in a restaurant) was a true-life episode in Aishwarya's relationship with Salman-the-awful-khan; fortunately she quit suffering his 'manliness' [lol!] and chucked him over for a sweeter man because of it.

* Salman's brother was ... o.O ... the Panache manipulator male in the movie

*Karan Johar (my mom's fav) was in the movie as was Madhubandarkar.

* Finally, my mom concluded that girls really shouldn't go into the fashion industry - it's too dangerously destabilizing of self-esteem. And that Priyanka Chopra should have listened to her dad at the start. End of story (heh)

Quantum of Solace [* * *]

While I'm very fond of Bond and Bond movies, I must say the trend towards stacatto images in those films are a big letdown. 'Cutting edge' if it's too edgy is just incomprehensible. Bah!

This Bond is very gay, the women are very butch and all the acting is wooden and billboard.

Like a friend said, some of the dialogue was good - about forgiving oneself. But it couldn't save the movie, imo.

Porn and it's rightful place

I've been on the net since '92 but too busy with communication with fellow beings to notice that ... well, the primarily male audience meant that the internet is really, really great ... [for porn]. ( a popular song about it! Credits: G.:)

Well, a friend of mine from IRC opened my eyes to how the average male sees the net. Other male friends then helped me check out the finest and grossest porn on virtually every existing server in the world through eMule (many thanks to IPU for all his help!:)

Wonders never cease at blinkered male vision for a woman coming of age in the Interweb Age: I realised 99% of the 25 yr old males had never EVER read a fairytale like Sleeping Beauty - most of them asked, "Who's that? Is she pretty?" lol!:D

So I made a quick trip to Wikipedia's Sleeping Beauty to enlighten them mornos and ... guess what I found? A porn version 'The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty' by Ann Rice! I read the trilogy to understand what made a respected woman author attempt it, albeit under a pseudonym. I gained several insights into porn through her conclusions.

And my conclusions, convictions even, as a woman, have grown stronger and more sure: a century from now, men will be ashamed at having used girls this way. The viewer will have to account in his place all the silence and the voyeurism. People will look at this age and the evidence of an abuse of privilege by dimorphic males of an economically/socially suppressed gender. They are the exploited however they were convinced or forced into the unnatural records of their suffering [convinced/forced/drugged/flattered/brainwashed].

The suffering of a 'weaker sex' is morally no different than the suffering of animals, german jews in ww2 or the loss of dignity suffered by a minority under racism/castism. No different, and therefore the guilt of the silent participants, the willing consumer, will be no different from that of the animal abuser, the nazi and the priest/ruler/racist.

And one day, men will be ashamed to flaunt it in the face of women online, the sufferers of the abusive industry. Maybe today we are too few online to be heard, but I hope I live to see that day when it's illegal and enforced because it's wrong.

Hm.;(

Darn.

I forgot to add women to the list of sufferers!! (Sometimes I think I fail to make my case as a feminist... OR there are way too many cases of wrongs-been-done in the world that it's distracting!;/ <-- it's got to be the latter! lol.:)

Villainy

... with a godwin twist that ... fails. hehe

The whole world's villainy can be accounted for by this one simple truth: those who abuse their privilege betray people they needn't have let down.

Villainy = An Abuse of Privilege.

They can't resist exploiting the advantage: of being in the majority (to a minority), of being human (to an animal), male (in patriarchy to a female), of being rich (to the poor), educated (to the uneducated), or magnetic and desired (to the ones drawn to them/who desire them). They never explore a resistance to the apriori givens, and eventually gorge on it until they disgust even their apologists.

There are 3 levels of villainous abuse:
1. The lone villain - he's ineffective from his isolation and not having gathered social approval for his work. eg. Norman Bates in Psycho, the Terminator or a lone serial killer

2. The usual suspect - he has power, he's learnt to justify his method and he's now working on polishing it up with practice. It's villians like Darth Vader or Hannibal Lecter, Hitler, Idi Amin/Musharraf where they've gained some public support for their abuse.

3. The mob rule - When there's widespread villainy or abuse of privilege, a sameness in the disregard for the object of their hate - usually a minority. eg., The Nazis exploiting a national blame into extermination policy like in Shindler's List (and innumerable Nazi movies) resembles the Iraq war propaganda against Islam; the hatred of the new media/IT/callcenter migrating to Bangalore which got community dogs exterminated; the IITian versions of saffronized nation-building spreading through orkut/blogs - it's the spread of a poison called Privilege - resist it.

[pic 1 - Darth Vader who was based on the Nazi stormtrooper;
pic 2 - Hitler in church in an extremely christianised Germany]