LAPATA IS ON THE COVER OF PEN AMERICA, DUDE!

This is a moment of serious pride for CM. This issue is going to grace the neat stacks of pages and mail at the desk of Don DeLillo! I hope you join me in congratulating our very own, amazing cluster of sparkly-awesomeness Lapata.

Some of you may be old enough to remember a letter to an academic journal that Sepoy posted last February. Below, I furnish the piece of writing in question for those who are curious. The article, on the portrayal of terrorists in Indian cinema, was written in 2002. It was, I like to think, fresh and timely. It can no longer be described in that manner now. Many new movies have come out that would be interesting to discuss in this context. Mani Ratnam has since made a film that touches more directly on the conflict in Sri Lanka (Kannathil Muthamittal). I would no longer be caught dead writing this kind of academic article. The world has changed, etc. But in the interest of freecycling, I give it to you, below. Perhaps it can be repurposed and made into a quilt?

But before we move on, one last item of business. I must also share with you the reviewer’s comments alluded to in my original letter. The following was scrawled in heavily applied ballpoint on the review sheet:

NO– I am normally very open-minded, but I cannot be so here. I have no interest in advocating an article which is designed to elicit empathy for terrorists & terrorism. I don’t want to “appreciate” or “comprehend” the world of terrorists. I am not naive. The problem is with the terrorist– NOT my understanding of these PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS. (and yes, I understand the intent of the essay. I am not misreading it)

Let Me Sleep in the Lap of Death:
Indian Cinema’s humanizing embrace of terrorists and freedom fighters

Introduction
In the final scene of the Indian film Dil Se (‘From the heart’, 1998), the hero, an employee of All India Radio (AIR), embraces the heroine, a separatist suicide bomber. The setting is a ridge in a Delhi park, dotted with ruined buildings from pre-colonial kingdoms. The heroine is on her way to bomb the annual Republic Day parade through the nation’s capital. The two embrace, and the bomb explodes. As the flames and embers radiate outwards, the last verses of a song, begun earlier in the film but never finished, are finally heard:

mujhe maut kii god meN sone de

mujhe maut kii god meN sone de
tere ruuh mere jism meN Dubone de…

Let me sleep in the lap of death

Let me sleep in the lap of death
Let your soul be drowned in my body…

For those not familiar with the aesthetics of the Indian cinema in general, and Bollywood (Bombay’s film industry) in particular, the scenario may seem bizarre and even rife with contradictions. How can one have a musical about a suicide bomber? How can the real-life present-day brutality of separatist movements and terrorist acts against states and their citizens be enveloped into the apparently real-time-external Bollywood formulas of romance, action, singing and dancing? We can learn human lessons about the phenomenon of terrorism from the region of South Asia, which has a greater familiarity with the so-called phenomenon of ‘terror,’ a familiarity which is reflected in a number of recent films on the subject. In the past ten years there have been a number of major films released in India with a terrorist as a central character, including Dil Se (1998), The Terrorist (1999), Maachis (‘Matches,’ 1996), and Mission Kashmir (2000). In all these films, the terrorist or terrorists are depicted in remarkably human terms and their motivations and actions are presented in a light which makes the audience see them as sympathetic characters. In each of the first three movies, all of which are discussed below, there are female terrorists.

The spate of film-making on terrorist themes may have been spurred on by the many separatist and violent struggles taking place within India’s borders. From the Islamist separatists in Kashmir, to the struggles in Assam, to the Khalistan movement in the Punjab, as well as the Sri Lankan civil war to the south, India and other South Asian countries have been contending with a number of different terrorist threats for quite some time now. But the paradigm of the terrorist protagonist is nothing new in Indian narratives, and dates back to the era of the struggle for independence in India.

Terrorism in India: context
In India, the concept of terrorism has been around a good deal longer than it has in the US. In the colonial era, the term ‘terrorist’ was used by the British to designate agitators for Indian independence who favored the use of force. The use of the term by the British (as opposed to ‘revolutionaries’, the term preferred by Indian nationalists) grew into a contrastive position with the Satyagrahis, or practitioners of the non-violent resistance advocated by MK Gandhi, whose movement in fact was started in reaction to the violent method of fighting colonial occupation. A non-violence movement only makes sense if there is a ‘violence’ movement. The use of the term by the British sought to denigrate the aims and goals of those who believed that force would be more effective against the British than the philosophies and demonstrations of the non-violence movement. Both groups were freedom fighters, and revolutionaries, but one ostensibly posed less of a threat to the British than the other. Many historians now believe that contrary to what popular opinion and Attenborough’s myth-making 1982 film Gandhi hold, it was, in actuality, a combination of these two tactics, violent and non-violent (along with the second World War and the election of a Labor Party government in England), which led to the successful removal of the British from India. Because of this history of the term ‘terrorist’ in India, one often finds a much more subtle discussion of the idea of terrorism in public debates, literature and film than one is wont to find in the American media. In particular, the notion that a terrorist is often just a pejorative term for freedom fighter or revolutionary is well understood. Many of India’s heroes of the Independence movement were bomb-makers and advocates of force- such as Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar ‘Azad’ and Subhash Chandra Bose (shown above)¹ – and not only do their names and deeds live on in history, but so too does the memory of their label from the British side as terrorists. Because of this, and perhaps because of a longstanding knowledge that one’s ideological and perhaps physical enemy could be living next door, the portrayal of terrorists in Indian films rarely resembles that found in American movies, in which terrorists tend to be shadowy, ‘international’ figures with indistinct and evil goals. Not only does this formulation, which is more often than not drawn from the portrayal of terrorists in the US news media, not help viewers understand what might motivate a suicide bomber- for example, because their goals are so vague and so patently evil- but their foreignness and superficiality play on deep-seated instincts toward xenophobia and suspicion of outsiders. By contrast, the terrorists of Indian film and fiction² are strikingly human, clearly defined in their political goals and motivations, attractive, intelligent, and often even saddened by the path they feel has been forced on them by history.

Songs in Dil Se
It may come as a surprise that a ‘serious’ film about terrorism could be made within the aesthetic framework of the Bollywood musical, but some Bollywood filmmakers have created a tradition of this kind of treatment. Director Raj Kapoor (1924-1988), for example, pioneered the big-budget entertainer with a progressivist political message in his films Awara (‘The vagabond’, 1951), criticizing the criminal justice system and discrimination, and Shree 420 (‘Mr. 420,’ 1955), a critique of big-city corruption and homelessness. In the final scene of Dil Se, discussed above, part of the effectiveness of the dramatic tension resides in the fact that the audience is already, more likely than not, familiar with the song which is about to erupt on the soundtrack. As Meghna the terrorist’s bomb detonates in a ball of fire, the audience anticipates the final lines of the song which round out the earlier verses from another scene. The audience, already fully aware of the lyrics for the song, “Satrangi Re” (‘The seven colors [of love]’), realizes that the line “Let me sleep in the lap of death” has not yet been sung. Death, and therefore tragedy, is anticipated as the ending.

The songs in Dil Se are the work of one of the most renowned composers in the Indian cinema, and certainly the most innovative in Bombay, AR Rahman, and as such are probably even more important to this film than regular songs are to other films. In the opening scene of the film, the hero, Amar, played by Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), enters a remote train platform on a dark and rainy night. He approaches a shadowy figure wrapped in a black cloth and asks him for matches. A sudden gust of wind blows the cloth away from the person’s face, revealing that it is not a man but a woman. For the audience, this one moment makes it perfectly clear that there is something out of the ordinary about this woman, since it is unusual for a beautiful young woman to be sitting on a train platform late at night all alone. SRK draws near to her and begins a lengthy monologue in which he attempts to get her to speak to him or tell him something about herself. The questions he asks her- What is your name? What is the name of your village? What is your mother’s name? And then, humorously, ‘what is your dog’s name?’- presage her discontinuity with location, family, and home. As we realize much later, the only thing she has is a name, and as a revolutionary terrorist she has renounced all else. Eventually he introduces himself, showing her an identification badge and explaining that he works for All India Radio (AIR; see Figure 3, above, in which Amar shows Meghna his badge for the second time). We come to realize over the course of the film that SRK is Meghna’s opposite: he is a servant of the State, an appendage of the government media and propaganda network, which serves the function of binding together the imagined community of India.

As he continues to ask her if there is anything she needs that he can get for her, she suddenly turns and looks him full in the face and replies, “A cup of hot tea.” What is remarkable about this exchange is her naked stare into his eyes. She is a woman, alone, in an empty station in the middle of the night, and she has the composure to look a strange man in the eyes, a mark of union and the beginning of a relationship in the visual-poetic language of the Indian cinema. He rushes off to get the tea and rushes back to see a train pulling out of the station, and Meghna seated in a lit compartment with two men. Pulling his jacket over his head, still holding the two cups of tea, he stands in the rain and remarks with resignation, “The world’s shortest love story.” A remark which signals to us that a) it will be a long love story, and b) we are ready for a song.

Of the many beautifully written and arranged songs in Dil Se, this opening number “Chhaya Chhaya” has attracted the most attention. The song is ‘picturized’ on the top of a train traveling through a jungle that seems to resemble the forests of the Northeast regions of India, where, not coincidentally, there is much ethnic and communal tension, separatism, and violent clashes of organized militias with the State. SRK dances in a contemporary, hip-hop style accompanied by a large chorus and a super model-statuesque woman dressed in peasant attire. The Janet Jackson-style dance moves are a deceptive cover for the complex Perso-Arabic lyrics (much of the poetry of the song lyrics borrows heavily from Urdu poetic traditions, particularly the sonnet-like verse form the ghazal), which would be nearly impossible for the average viewer to comprehend. The nature of the linguistic/poetic style of the lyrics and their reference to devotion and love presage the tension which will carry us through the movie. This is a terrorist movie, but it is also a love story, and not just any love story, but the kind of love story that legends are made of. The setting might be modern, but, as we will learn, this is Romeo and Juliet, or more accurately, Laila and Majnun, all over again. The tale of Laila and Majnun is a traditional Arabic love story in which the two characters fall in love but cannot marry because they belong to separate tribes. Majnun eventually goes crazy from his love and wanders out in the desert where he is nourished for a time by animals, but dies because of the intensity of his passion for Laila.

Thus begins a tale which creates an ingenious blend of commentary on modern day terrorism and separatism and a compelling reworking of the tale of Laila and Majnun. Following in the footsteps of earlier populist-progressivists in the Indian Cinema such as Raj Kapoor, the filmmaker, Mani Ratnam, knows that making a film in the realist mode of say, Satyajit Ray, on the subject of terrorism, will not appeal to the general public. In a cinema which requires non-linear and symbolic narrative; relatively ahistorical, apolitical romances; and the copious use of songs and dances, it is not easy to deliver messages on current events with a straight-on treatment. Mani Ratnam manages to weave together multiple layers of visual, lyrical, musical, and narrative-based symbolism to create both a blockbuster-style film and make a serious commentary on contemporary events. In the song “Chhaya Chhaya,” for example, the most experimental element, in terms of the visual poetics of the Bombay cinema, is not the fact that SRK and a huge chorus are dancing on top of a moving train (spectacle is an important part of the genre, especially during the song sequences), nor is it the complex and elaborate Perso-Arabic flavored song lyrics. Rather, it is the fact that the song is shot in a setting which at least looks like the Northeast frontier area of India. Connected to the rest of India by a strip of land carved around Bangladesh by the Partition of 1947 (Bangladesh was then West Pakistan), the Northeast frontier provinces are a remote region torn apart by separatist movements and brutal army-led crackdowns. In the landscapes of popular national imagination, this thickly jungled and mountainous region does not play much of a role, certainly not in the landscapes of the Bombay cinema. At the same time, forests and natural surroundings, as well as hilly regions, are in fact important parts of the visual vocabulary of the picturization of Hindi songs. In a tradition which could be seen as rooted in the poetics of traditional love poetry from a number of different language literatures in the Subcontinent, Hindi film songs arrange visual cues that are recognized by the audience as symbolizing a complex array of moods and progressions in the romantic aspect of the narrative.³

In the case of “Chhaya Chhaya,” the jungle landscape can be seen as a ‘beginning of romantic love’ setting in the traditional sense, but it is also meant to evoke something unfamiliar: a particular remote area of the nation, and one to which the audience does not frequently travel. In addition, the use of the train as the stage for the dancers can be seen as one step beyond spectacle: it actually is a train, and it is taking us, the audience, and the film’s hero, a character firmly rooted in the capital, New Delhi, on a journey to the periphery. Throughout the film, Mani Ratnam uses this method of merging messages and symbols to create a complex story, one which is a classic tragic love tale, as well as a story about separatism and suicide bombers, with multiple layers of interpretability and accessibility by the audience.

Specificity and Timelessness
How does one fit a narrative which, though not a ‘true story,’ still must contain elements of historical, political, and geographical specificity, into the Bollywood generic framework? The Bollywood framework could be defined as non-specific, non-particularized, and emphatically non-realist, perhaps because it seeks to capture a pan-Indian audience, and perhaps because it plays the role of escapist fantasy for a large viewing public for whom the harsh realities of everyday life are not something one pays money to go and see. One method Mani Ratnam uses is to make the origins, regional affiliations, and religious/ethnic identity of Meghna, the terrorist herself, deliberately vague, supplying the audience with only the barest clues to figure out what movement she has joined.

Her name, Meghna, sounds vaguely Hindu, but on the other hand it is simply the name of a river in the Northeast. She doesn’t appear to be Muslim, although she is sometimes seen wearing a dark shawl over her head, but that might just be for anonymity or warmth. The only truly factual clues come near the end of the film, when Meghna explains to Amar her reasons for being a suicide bomber. Her explanation is depicted by means of a video montage flashback shown partly from the narrative perspective of Indian Army soldiers killing and raping the people in her village. Through the flashback, we come to understand her motivation as one arising from being orphaned and raped by the Indian Army, and later adopted into a separatist army camp for children. In one scene, Meghna is shown as a young girl standing to attention in her training camp with a flag flying overhead featuring a rhinoceros. The rhinoceros is indigenous to Assam, and is often used as a symbol of the region. Here, it probably suggests Meghna’s affiliation with one of Assam’s many separatist organizations, such as the powerful group ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam).⁴

The ambiguity of Meghna’s heritage serves not only to make Dil Se a timeless romance analogous to Laila and Majnun, but also to suggest that in the matter of separatism and terrorism, specificity can only be given so much importance. As the audience seeks to figure out which struggle Meghna is engaging in, they are forced on some level to confront the fact that it could be one of many. The story of disenfranchised communities, either at the geographical peripheries of nations, or simply at the socio-economic peripheries, and the state-sponsored violence perpetrated against members of these communities, is a fact of life all around India, and indeed all around the world. Meghna is simply a young woman driven to the edge who has nothing left to lose.

Mani Ratnam himself is Tamil, from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, the separatist struggles of Kashmir and Assam are very far away, and the battle raging much closer to home (but external to India’s borders) is that between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE—The Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam). It was in fact a female suicide bomber from the Tamil Tigers who assassinated the then Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991. Dil Se is part of a trilogy rounded out by Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992) and Bombay (1995). The previous two films dealt with Kashmiri terrorism and how it can be of importance to Indians in the South (Roja), and Hindu-Muslim conflict and rioting around the time of the demolition of the Babri Masjid (Babur’s Mosque) in Ayodhya (Bombay). Mani Ratnam’s trilogy attempts to bring together a variety of conflicts eating away at India’s national borders and identity and show how these are conflicts which affect all Indians, although his apparent confidence in the idea of a nation shown in Roja seems to have been substantially undermined by the time he directed the third part of the trilogy, Dil Se.

Specificity and Realism: The Terrorist
Interestingly, Mani Ratnam’s films do not deal with the Tamil Tigers at all, perhaps out of an urge to bring together lessons learned from both the south and the north of India and create a national dialogue. Fellow Tamil filmmaker Santosh Sivan (also cinematographer for Dil Se, as well as a number of other Mani Ratnam films), however, has brought the theme of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination to film in his 1999 The Terrorist. The Terrorist was shot in South India and is a Tamil language film. With no song and dance numbers and not much romance or dialogue, The Terrorist falls into the genre ‘art film’ in terms of Indian cinematic categories. The ninety-five minute film, extremely short by Indian standards, chronicles the life of a young woman in a terrorist training camp, presumably run by the LTTE, in a country which is presumably Sri Lanka, from the time she is selected to take on the mission to assassinate a ‘VIP’ to the moment when she is supposed to press the button. Sivan’s film also lacks specificity, although this is probably because of the dangers both legal and otherwise involved in openly making a non-allegorical film about the Tamil Tigers.

The Terrorist is very clearly meant to bring the audience inside the head of Malli, the terrorist, to help us understand the mindset of a suicide bomber, as well as to explore how such an individual might experience being human. The device used for this is a possible pregnancy; Malli had during a battle spent the night comforting a fellow wounded soldier, and had for the first time found herself in the close proximity of a man her own age. Through a series of suggestions she comes to believe that she may be pregnant and carrying his child. The film never makes it clear whether or not her encounter with the fellow soldier was sexual, but it is also implied that Malli is probably not certain what exact conditions would produce pregnancy in a woman other than proximity to a man. As the consciousness of possible motherhood begins to overwhelm her she undergoes a humanizing transformation, perhaps bringing about an awareness of the cycle of human life, a cycle she has essentially been trained to interfere with. While in earlier parts of the film, Malli is seen ruthlessly and unemotionally killing the enemy with, variously, a machete, an automatic weapon, and a bayonet, she begins to transform into a more emotional and self-reflective state as she awaits her mission and contemplates the possibility that she is pregnant.

Her transformation is aided by the setting where she has been assigned to wait until the assassination date. She is staying with a talkative elderly man in a large, mostly empty house. The room where she sleeps used to be the bedroom of her host’s son. The son, who we later learn is dead, was a photo-journalist, and the tiny room is completely collaged from floor to ceiling in photographs of international conflicts, as well as many pictures of different women, a world map, and a mirror. By looking at herself in the mirror, locating her place on the map, and examining the pictures around the room, she comes to identify herself as both a woman and a human with common bonds to other humans (see still, Figure 5, a reflection of Malli examining herself in the mirror in the room, photographs in the background). A shocking moment comes one day when she realizes that one of the photographs of women in her room is actually a small window cut out of the wall through which she can see her host’s wife, lying open-eyed in a coma in the room next door. She learns that the photographer’s mother had gone into a coma the day she had learned of her son’s death (presumably due to violence surrounding a photo-journalism assignment). As Malli comes to believe that she is pregnant, her identification with the comatose mother on the other side of the wall grows. Motherhood is an all-encompassing identity for the other woman, to the extent that she more or less ceased to exist when she lost her son. She is placed in opposition to Malli, for whom killing ‘the enemy’ as a good soldier is the only identity she has had up until now.

In the final scene it is not clear whether or not she pushes the button, but it seems as though she does not. Oddly, The Terrorist, shot in a realist style with no singing and dancing, seems more farfetched in the end than Dil Se, in the sense that the realist film resorts to clichéd ideas about lifecycles and the contradictions between motherhood and terrorism, while Dil Se suggests that though Meghna eventually admits her love for Amar, there is no practicable solution or way out of her mental state, or her commitment to follow through with her mission. Meghna is not softened by human experience; it destroys her. By contrast, Malli seems to be redeemed by her essential femininity, an unrealistic solution to conflicts and struggles which clearly transcend the urge to play out traditional gender roles in all different parts of the globe.

The Hunger of Majnun: The State Stalks its Borders
Gender roles come into play on multiple layers in Dil Se through the analogies of Amar with Majnun, the crazed and obsessed lover, and, Meghna with Laila, the object of Majnun’s desires. The hero of the standard Bombay film wins the heart of the heroine through dogged persistence and aggressive pursuit. He has to prove his commitment to her through his tenacity, to an extent that would make him seem like a stalker and not a hero in an American film (see Figure 6, from Dil Se, above). Added to this traditional portrayal of the male lover or suitor in Bombay cinema, the actor in Dil Se, Shah Rukh Khan, actually rose to mega-star status through a series of roles, such as those he played in the hits Darr (‘Fear’, 1994), Baazigar (‘The gambler’, 1993), and Anjaam (‘Consequence’, 1994), in which the role of lover and stalker/serial killer are conflated in a manner quite unusual to Bollywood norms. The persona and the layering of roles of a particular actor or actress is often used as a device in Indian movies to build the character the actor or actress is currently playing (theme songs from previous hit films will sometimes be laced into the soundtrack when a particular actor walks onto the set, to remind the audience of the effect surrounding the nostalgia for the previous movie and its songs, for example). Because of this, SRK brings to his roles as romantic lead a strong subtext of violence and obsession, carrying over from the audience’s memory of Darr and Baazigar in particular (see Figure 7, above, picturing SRK in this mode, as opposed to the one below, Figure 8, where he is pictured in his more playful love interest mode). Everyone knows that SRK’s obsessive brand of love can lead him to the border of dementia, and that it is always possible he will appear in a desperate situation before the film is over, in which he must stagger or crawl insanely through some alleyway or forest , stammering incoherently, rivulets of blood and sweat running down his face and body (which does in fact happen in Dil Se).

As the plot for Dil Se builds, and with it, Amar’s Majnun-like obsession with the elusive Meghna, we know, both from the traditional pursuit by the hero of the heroine in Bollywood movies, as well as from SRK’s presence in the role, that this can only lead to madness and total destruction, due primarily to Amar’s self-destructive and all-consuming male desire for Meghna. This use of the gender roles of the hero and the heroine makes possible another, even more compelling analogy: Amar is identified with the State (as a reporter for All India Radio) and Meghna with the peripheries of the State’s borders (as a separatist from the Northeast Frontier). Thus the dogged, macho, and obsessive pursuit of Meghna by Amar becomes emblematic of the State’s ‘desire’ to hang onto the peripheral regions and crush out opposition at all costs, rejecting the possibility of separation, or even dialogue about separation or demands.

As in the gender stereotypes reinforced by mainstream Bombay films, in which women’s desires and women’s voices are neither heard nor relevant, Amar’s desires and Amar’s thoughts are the only ones we hear until the film is practically at an end. This paradigm is reinforced by Amar’s actual employment as a DJ and radio-journalist, who is not only able to speak to us, the audience, throughout the film, but is also able to speak to the nation through the means of broadcasting his voice all over India. In a haunting and recurring song, Amar actually ‘speaks’ and calls out to Meghna by playing a particular song over the radio in which he asks her to call out to him, an ironic and impossible request when broadcast through the unilateral organ of the radio from which she hears it. Her only defense or possible active role in this supposed interchange is to turn the radio off and on, which she does, causing this refrain to echo in and out of the soundtrack:

Ai ajnabii tuu bhii kabhii aawaaz de kahiiN se
MaiN yahaaN TukRoN meN jii rahaa huuN
Tuu kahiiN TukRoN meN jii rahii hai

….MaiN adhuuraa tuu adhuurii jii rahii hai

Oh stranger, will you please call out as well some time?
I am living here, in pieces
You are living somewhere, in pieces

….I am incomplete, you are living, incomplete

The notion that they are neither of them complete beings without the other is his, and is never expressed by her. This again is a reminder of the State’s belief that the nation is incomplete without these regions, a belief that is unilaterally expressed. As she slowly becomes conscious that she loves him, Meghna loses her sense of composure and is robbed of peace of mind, though she does eventually assert herself by using him to achieve her goal. Manipulating his obsessive love for her, she asks him to give her a job at AIR, and thus infiltrates the center, gaining access to press passes that will allow her a good position on the day of the parade. Despite her loss of composure and her love for him, she does not, however, lose her resolve. She is already wired with explosives and walking toward the Republic Day parade when Amar manages to track her down, secure from her the sought-after nod that yes, she does love him, and envelop her in that embrace of unity and completeness he has desired for so long, an embrace which sets off her explosives and kills them both. This suicidal union, setting up a parallel between the Indian state’s ultimately self-destructive pursuit of unity at the expense of peace- broadcasting at the expense of listening- with the legendary crazed lover Majnun, shows both sides tragically entrenched in their positions. By aligning the state and the separatists with the traditional gender roles of the Hindi hero and heroine and with Laila and Majnun, Mani Ratnam suggests that the terrorist’s ostensible goal, for his or her voice to be heard and be considered consequential enough to move the State, can be understood in terms of the suppression of female voices in patriarchal systems of love, courtship and marriage. Though Dil Se ends as a tragedy, with no apparent solution to the entrenchment of both sides, the romantic parallel does suggest ways of re-viewing India’s relationship with insurgency and separatism in terms of traditional gender roles, gender equality movements, and paradigms for dialogue and understanding.

Another Laila, Another Majnun: Maachis
In the 1996 film about the separatist movement in the Indian state of Punjab (or the Khalistan Movement), Maachis (‘Matches’), by the director Gulzar, the Laila and Majnun parallel is also introduced, this time explicitly. The film centers on the transformation of an ordinary middle-class Punjabi teenager, Kripal Singh (Chandrachur Singh), into a terrorist in the separatist movement in the Punjab (following the 1984 Operation Bluestar attack by Indira Gandhi’s government on Sikh separatists in the Golden Temple in Amritsar). The film seeks to show how an ordinary citizen might be driven to extremism in an environment marked by police brutality and political corruption. Leaving behind his girlfriend, Veera (played by the actress Tabu), Kripal Singh disappears into the movement, reappearing only once. Veera’s world is in turn slowly completely dismantled by the police crackdown in the region, and in the end she too joins the movement, surprising Kripal Singh by showing up one day as the new missile shooter in his unit. A series of gaffes on the part of their unit leads to Kripal Singh’s arrest and the annihilation of the group. In one of the final scenes, Veera goes to visit Kripal Singh in prison and, comparing their relationship to that of Laila and Majnun, passes a cyanide capsule to him in a kiss.

The reference to Laila and Majnun is made here not to engage with the paradigm of the crazed lover, but simply to invoke the tragedy of their love story. Here Laila and Majnun are on the same side and are divided by the brutality of the State. Whereas in Dil Se and The Terrorist, the terrorists are depicted as ruthless and impeccably trained for combat and insurgency, the terrorists in Maachis are consistently portrayed as inexperienced and inept. While Malli is humanized by the possibility of motherhood and Meghna is humanized through a sensitive portrayal of the traumatic stress that has created her psychological state, as well as the pain that love causes her (though she stoically withstands temptation), Veera and Kripal Singh are human from the start and never become ‘inhuman’ warriors. Their ineptitude, lack of savvy, and poor timing ensure that their humanity is never in doubt. Throughout the film, it does not even seem as though they ascribe to a clearly formulated political ideology of separatism, and one of their mentors, Sanatan, is even given dialogue in which he suggests that their group wants nothing more than to remain in the nation, but is being driven apart from the center. In the final scene, the hero and heroine ingest cyanide capsules and slowly die, separated from one another, from their movement, from their families, and from the State. Though this method of humanizing the terrorist is effective in some ways, it downplays the actual ideologies of the proponents of the Khalistan Movement and thus casts the terrorists in a weaker position than is actually accurate historically.

Conclusion
The very notion underlying the idea of ‘terror’ as perpetrated by the ‘terrorist’ speaks of the emotional, affective response of a people toward strategically planned acts of violence or threats of violence. The ‘terror’ at the root of ‘terrorism’ is a collective sensation across a society which must be processed in emotional terms. A terrorist and the people he or she targets are in fact locked into an emotional relationship. By imagining terrorism through the romantic generic lens of Bombay’s popular film-making tradition, we can learn new ways of comprehending the phenomenon. In the films discussed here, Dil Se, The Terrorist, and Maachis, the terrorists are all portrayed in sensitive human terms. Though this is in part the legacy of the history of the notion of terrorism in India, which has had an impact on characterizations of revolutionary activity in literature and film there for the past century, these films bring to the genre a new twist. Since all three films feature an intrepid female terrorist, we are given a new lens through which to consider the role of the terrorist in society. The creation of characters who are female suicide bombers works on a number of levels to complicate conventional notions of what terrorism means and what drives individuals to join terrorist movements. On one level, the femaleness of each character, and her inability to play out traditional gender roles of wife, lover, and mother, suggest that terrorism is the last resort of a people and is chosen when conditions of oppression are so extreme that basic life-cycle roles must be curtailed. On an allegorical level, we can read the phenomenon of terror through gender and consider the conditions of extreme oppression of a people closely parallel to those of patriarchal domination and oppression of women. Terrorism then becomes the last resort to make one’s voice heard in an unequal relationship.

Works Cited
Films:
Anjaam (1994)
Awara (1951)
Baazigar (1993)
Bombay (1995)
Darr (1994)
Dil Se (1998)
Maachis (1996)
Mission Kashmir (2000)
Roja (1992)
Shree 420 (1955)
The Terrorist (1999)

Websites:
Cineraider. Cineraider: A Critical Guide to Asian Cinema. March 15, 2003.
.
India Talkies. Dil Se…A Mani Ratnam Film. 1998. Rage-India. .
Internet Movie Database. 2003. .
Sivan, Santosh. Santosh Sivan Online. 2001. .
Subramanian, Satish. Rahman Online!. 2003. .

Books:
Agyeya. Shekhar: Ek Jiivanii (‘Shekhar: A biography’). Benares: Sarasvatii Press, 1940 (Part I), 1944 (Part II).
Ahmad, Eqbal. Terrorism: Theirs and Ours. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001.
Baruah, Sanjib. India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal. Modern South Asia: History, Culture and Political Economy.
New York: Routledge, 1998.
Chandra, Bipin. India’s Struggle for Independence. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish and Paul Willemen. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. British Film
Institute, 1999.
Selby, Martha. Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Wirsig, Robert G.. India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and Its
Resolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Yashpal. Daadaa KaamreD (‘Dada comrade’). Lucknow: Viplav Kaaryaalay, 1941.
—. Sinhaavalokan (‘A retrospective’). Allahabad: Lokbhaaratii Prakaashan, 1994.

1. Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republic Army and was executed by the British in 1931. He was linked to a number of attacks on the British, including the 1928 murder of the British official Saunders and the bombing of the Central Assembly Hall in 1929. Following the earlier film on his life, Shaheed (1965), five biographical movies are being released this year alone about Bhagat Singh, including 23rd March 1931, Shaheed (2002) and The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002). The sudden resurgence in interest in Bhagat Singh has been linked to the current climate of nationalism in India following recent cross-border conflicts with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue. Chandrashekhar ‘Azad’ (1902-1931) was Bhagat Singh’s mentor, and was assassinated by the British in 1931. Subhash Chandra Bose (1897-1945), also known as ‘Netaji’, was originally a member of the Congress Party and a colleague of Gandhi’s. Later he decided that the only way to beat the British was through allying with the fascists in Europe. Bose forged ties with Hitler and formed the Indian National Army with the help of the Japanese, who released a large number of Indian Prisoners of War to him. After a military conflict with the British Indian Army that ended in the defeat of the INA, Bose died on his way to Japan in a plane crash.
2. Portrayals of the humanized terrorist have a long history in Indian fiction writing going back as far as the Bengali novel Anandmath (1896) by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee perhaps and appearing in many other language literatures.
3. In the study of classical and pre-modern literary genres, these poetic ‘rules’ are of paramount importance. In Sanskrit poetics, the vocabulary of emotions has been classified into eight or nine ‘rasas’ or flavors, literally ‘juices,’ with corresponding landscapes, colors, weather, animals, and the like. It would be a stretch to say that Bombay cinema follows the dictates of traditional Rasa Theory, but more aptly, one could say that Bollywood has a rasa theory of its own, perhaps not so elaborate as in classical models, but still rather complex. For a readable treatment of rasa theories, see the introduction in Martha Selby, Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.)
4. For an excellent and detailed work on contemporary Assam, see Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

No, I doubt I’d be that kind of father
not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking–
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!
But–imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No I can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream–

– From “Marriage,” by Gregory Corso

A Hindi poet I knew in Allahabad was, like many writers in his generation, very taken with the Beatnik poets. He had a particular desire to translate into Hindi the poem “Marriage” by Gregory Corso, but he was stuck on the line “…Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus.” We explained to him what each term meant, but in the end we had to agree that it would be pretty much impossible to translate that part elegantly. It would possibly take at least two or three footnotes, and as AK Ramanujan always used to say, in translation, “every footnote is a confession of failure.”

In the shiny future of globalized literary production, in which writers and translators can work hand-in-hand to produce smoothly realized publications for the international market, such conundrums are becoming extinct, according to Tim Parks in his a post at The New York Review of Books (h/t AK). Parks explains that not only do writers the world over hope to gain success by reaching the Goliath-like global English-language readership and prize pool by writing works that are easily translatable, but now many authors are finding that they can’t quite get the respect they deserve within their own literary/language milieux if they have not found a global audience. This formula, and certain literary styles, especially magical realism, have created a certain blandness in contemporary international literature. Parks mentions as a primary example of this that Kazuo Ishiguro, who, he says, has spoken about the importance of writing in such a manner that translators are not given too hard a time by references or language that is overly culturally specific. The fact that Ishiguro writes in English and grew up in the UK makes this example slightly confusing for his argument.

Murakami, who is known to work closely with translators to make sure his work comes out smoothly in English, would have been a better example to use. He. The omnipresence of Western and especially American food, music and sundry popular culture references in Murakami’s novels has been widely noted and makes for a smooth ride– the reader is asked to wrap her head around challenging and surreal situations and narrative loops– but the characters are all eating KFC. Recently I found myself startled when the protagonist in Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World cooks up an endless meal of Japanese dishes for a preternaturally ravenous librarian. I found myself thinking, “I have no idea if that’s a lot of food or just a long list of light snacks.” I realized I was totally unaccustomed to thinking very hard about anything Japanese when I read Murakami.

Indian literature in English is, of course, written in English. I see how this example fits into Parks’ argument better than the work of Ishiguro, but it also serves to underscore the fact that he is eliding translated works with works that feel translated; not in the unfelicitous footnoted fashion of Gregory Corso translated into Hindi, but in the more digestible flavorings of Rushdie and his successors. Cultural references, Indian words and pidgin dialogue are sprinkled liberally throughout, like so much chaat powder. It often seems that many of these sprinklings are superfluous and merely serve to give writing an ‘Indian’ flavor. Perhaps it is a device which serves, in part, to make readers like Tim Parks feel as though they are reading a novel translated from an Indian language, when, in actuality, they’d never even find such a thing unless they were willing to go to the back of a bookshop in India, crouch down so they could see the lower shelves, and work their way through the poorly lit non-alphabetized Rupa, Katha and non-Shobha Dé and Khushwant Singh Penguin India section.

An echo of the problem of blandness and uniformity in international literature can be found in the art world. In an article on the current exhibitions in New York’s modern art museums in the NYT this Sunday, Roberta Smith complains of a similar problem of sameness. After listing off all the big shows currently up, she goes on to lament, “After encountering so many bare walls and open spaces, after examining so many amalgams of photography, altered objects, seductive materials and Conceptual puzzles awaiting deciphering, I started to feel as if it were all part of a big-box chain featuring only one brand.” Her conclusions as to how this problem has come about sound startlingly similar to the pressures that dominate the production of global literature:

But a combination of forces threatens to herd all of our major art institutions into the same aesthetic pen. The need to raise and make money sends curators hunting for artists with international star power who work big at least some of the time, deploy multiple entertaining mediums and make for good ad campaigns…. The small show devoted to an artist who doesn’t have an immense reputation and worldwide market becomes rarer and rarer.

Knights of Columbus

On the other hand, maybe the problem is much simpler than that. One should never underestimate the profound provincialism of the Metropole. Maybe when we talk about ‘global trends’ and ‘international art,’ and we (I) cite critics writing for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, we are really just talking about New York. Yes, New York is a global power center for publishing and art, but notice how Roberta Smith, in her review, mentions offhandedly that non-New York American artists showing at the New York museums were, not too long ago, referred to by the slightly insulting term “regional artists.” And maybe when we talk about the demands of global readerships and patrons of the arts, we are really talking about the demands of the publishers and curators of New York City. And maybe if New York publishers wanted to publish things that were more demanding to translate, they would be able to market them for mass consumption just as easily. Some things may be impossible to translate, and the translators may be forced to confess their failure in the form of a footnote or a glossary, but Ramanujan’s point was always that when necessary, the confessions must be made, not avoided.

Our friend Lapata is having an exhibition at Counter Pulse and I failed, miserably, to notify you. More importantly, I wasn’t able to attend in person.

She has put the works featured in the show on her flickr page: Dhoom Dhamaka! Show. 

I think some of her strongest work, to date, is being featured in this show – specifically, the Rasa series. Since she has portrayed generals and kings, she immediately got how a true theocratic-juristical Leader, such as me, should be captured. After a lengthy, exhaustive, and exhausting series of photo-shoots – scattered around the globe – she finally was able to capture the sprite that lurks behind my twinkling eyes. That iridescent smile.

Karuna
Bhayanak
Bibhatsa
Shanta
Adbhut
Raudra
Veer
Hasya
Shringar

In all seriousness, go see her show:

1. Dhoom Dhamaka!

Sept. 4 – Oct. 1

Opening reception: Sept. 4 at 6-8 PM.

CounterPulse
1310 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

The show will be held in conjunction with a performance by Joti Singh’s Duniya Dance Company. Performances will take place Sept. 11-13 at 8 PM.

The theme? The War on Terror! Paintings are shown in the lobby and can be seen from 12-6 Tues-Fri, at the opening, and during the performance (where they will be projected onto the stage). For more information about purchasing tickets ($12-$20) for the performance and directions to the venue, visit CounterPulse .

(Suggested listening while reading this review: click here; don’t bother to watch the clip, since it’s just a fan slideshow) The film version of Etgar Keret’s novella “Kneller’s Happy Campers” (which is also recreated in the graphic novel Pizzeria Kamikaze) has finally been released in the US (see the earlier review of Keret’s work here). Despite some major and possibly regrettable alterations to the setting and plot, it is still an excellent movie. The biggest disappointment is the location. The story takes place in an afterlife universe where people go after they have committed suicide. In the novella and graphic novel, this place is a city and surrounding countryside that bears a remarkable resemblance to Tel Aviv. The movie was shot in the United States in run-down parts of LA and somewhere near the Nevada-California border, which makes sense, since most cinematic universes are relocated to California. The characters are now mostly American, or recent immigrants to America. Choosing to make the whole movie American and losing the Israeli element of course robs the story of some of its original flavor, although in the novella the place is never named, and is only meant to resemble the lousy places where the suicides lived before they killed themselves. Suicide is not a culturally flat construct and in the context of an ironic Israeli tale it takes on an especially dark and provoking resonance. On the other hand, the Croatian director, Goran Dukic, has done a superb job choosing the grimmest and most derelict locations imaginable, and this does make up for the initial disappointment that our hero is now from New Jersey and his life has probably improved quite a bit now that he is dead and living in California.

Many alterations have been made to the story, but most of them work well and some brilliantly in helping the writing transition to a visual medium. Dukic shows enormous attention to detail in his choices of location and set decoration. In an interview he explains that he directed his crew to find the most run-down and undesirable objects imaginable for every scene. This was a clever and thrifty way of dealing with the task of creating an alternate universe on a shoestring budget. Added to the general dilapidation of everything is an element of whimsy which helps to underscore the absurdity of the dismal universe of suicides. For example, in a couple of scenes that call for some kind of transportation, ridiculously small vehicles appear, such as a tiny train car that seats only two people. As Dukic explains in the same interview, the color was desaturated after shooting, giving the whole movie an aged, slightly dirty look, like a yellowing, battered old photograph.

Many reviews of the movie accuse it of being yet another entry in the roadtrip/romance genre, with the added gimmick of the suicide universe. Some reviewers have even accused Dukic of glamorizing suicide or taking hipster irony to an unpalatable limit. The roadtrip/romance aspects of the film are far stronger than in the original story, no doubt mostly to give it more coherence and direction. The unexpectedly happy romantic ending was also added for the film, making the whole thing a lot more Hollywoody, despite its clear indie roots. Nonetheless, to take Wristcutters as a roadtrip romance is to misunderstand the underlying mood and message of the story. Far from glamorizing suicide, Keret’s story imagines the outcome of suicide as the opposite of desensitized escape or martyrdom, a continuation of the depressing state before the act, only just a bit more depressing and lonely. An exception to the more depressing rule might be the case of the side-kick character, Eugene, an aggressive, punky Russian immigrant rocker, whose entire family has committed suicide and is now happily reunited in suicide land. Though this character exists in the novella, he is not depicted (at least not in English translation) as a Russian immigrant. In the film, the family’s happiness at being reunited, their close bond and deep affection for one another, and their relative lack of interest in the fact that everything is slightly worse, seems a commentary on the trials of migration.

Eugene’s career as a musician when he was alive provides an excuse for an excellent soundtrack full of songs by the “Transglobal Gypsy Punk Rock” band, Gogol Bordello. The character of Eugene is in fact modeled on the lead singer and founder of Gogol Bordello, Eugene Hütz, a friend of the director, Goran Dukic. The opening scene includes a song by Tom Waits, who also plays the role of Kneller, an idiosyncratic charismatic group leader of sorts, in the film. The Tom Waits part of the movie, toward the end, is worth the price of admission alone, and his acting and character go a long way toward heightening the bizarreness of the story, which reaches a climax in a spectacular show put on by ‘the Messiah’, played by Will Arnett (AKA G.O.B. Bluth). The fact that Tom Waits and Will Arnett play roles very similar to other personas they have inhabited outside the film adds to the heightened surreality of these later scenes. Importing the baggage of very particular (indie-ish) pop culture icons makes the characters they play jump out like scenes in a pop-up book. The effect is clearly intended, and serves as a short hand for the elaborate characterizations in the novella that might otherwise require loads more explication in the film version.

And finally, it is worth taking a look at this interview with Goran Dukic and the female lead, Shannyn Sossamon, if only to see how mind-numbingly dull some interviewers are, how exhausting Sundance must be, and how startlingly undereducated Sossamon apparently is.

As you can see, I am a magnificent horse. Proof of my magnificence lies in the fact that I was presented as a special gift to First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy by Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1962. During the First Lady’s resplendent tour of South Asia, she was presented with many fine gifts, including me (Sardar), an elephant named Urvashi (presented by the Nehrus), and two baby Bengal tigers (presented by Air India) whom the First Lady had planned to name Kitty and Ken after Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and his wife. I say she had planned to name them Kitty and Ken because they perished before they could be shipped to the United States from India. Clearly I was the most suitable gift of these as the First Lady was an equestrienne nonpareil and I was successfully brought to the state of Virginia in the United States so that Mrs. Kennedy might enjoy my company as much as possible.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “You say you are magnificent, but you are only half a horse! Where is the other half of your body?” This is an excellent question. As it happens, I am actually a painting of a horse, representing a particular horse, named Sardar, that existed in history. My photograph was taken in Virginia in the company of the First Lady and Field Marshal Khan, and an artist has rendered that scene in a triptych. During the course of this rendering, the artist has made certain stylistic decisions, causing me to be only half a horse in her painting, though I remain a full horse in the original photograph. This decision was no doubt made because, in the style of miniaturists of old, she did not wish to make the animal larger than the two great human leaders also present in her painting, yet, bound by the duties of a perspectival painter in the Frankish mold, she was not able to bring herself to make me a very small horse in proportion to the First Lady and the Field Marshal. Thus, I have become half a large horse.

As befits any momentous event in human history, as well as those timeless tales of old that perhaps once took place in the ordinary lives of every day men and women, such as the story of Leila and Majnun or that of the travails of Princess Diana, the wondrous tour of South Asia undertaken by Mrs. Kennedy, or Jackie O, as she is also known, has been documented on many pages and even upon the medium of celluloid. As it happens, another artist, one from the country of France, accompanied Mrs. Kennedy on this tour, and created many intricate paintings depicting many thrilling events during that time, but neglected to capture the apotheosis of the journey, the gifting of a horse (me) to Jackie O. Those paintings by the French lady are collected in a small volume called Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad that includes an introduction by former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, for whom a Bengal Tiger cub was nearly named until it met with an untimely demise, being a less suitable ornament to the First Lady’s person. As Mr. Galbraith recounts:

My wife Kitty and I planned Jacqueline Kennedy’s trip to India. We resisted a proposal that she visit the ancient temple of Konarak, where her viewing of the explicitly erotic statuary would have greatly attracted the media instinct which later was so rejoiced by Bill Clinton. We were her hostess and host until Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most distinguished statesmen of his age, snatched her away. The American embassy residence in new Delhi was then under construction; our dwelling was too small so we had requisitioned nearby accommodations. Nehru held them to be inadequate and moved Jackie and her sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, to rooms in his own house. This was not a simple act of grace: Meeting her at the plane and seeing her later, he was enormously attracted and wanted to see more of her, which as the visit passed he did.

For many chroniclers, it was Mrs. Kennedy’s wardrobe that caused the most excitement. The ne plus ultra of the trip was for many that little pink dress she wore in Udaipur. In an article on her fashions during the trip, a reporter from Life magazine recounts many interesting tidbits:

At the start of her journey to India, Jacqueline Kennedy expressed the hope that her trip would not turn into a fashion show. But despite her best efforts, her every seam has been the subject of hypnotized attention from the streets of Delhi to Khyber Pass. By the time she reached Pakistan, an official release was describing her as “the best-dressed woman in the world.” whether or not she was wearing a hat or a hair bow or a belt took on international importance. An Indian lady correspondent timidly asked, “Would it be impolite to mention in my story that she is not wearing stockings?”

The most dogged of the clothes-watchers in her press entourage have now counted 22 different costumes as of the end of her stay in Lahore. She has worn only two things a second time. The rare “repeats” are greeted with the joy of a bird watcher spotting a prothonotary warbler.

….

Among the statisticians of the trip there are even counters of shoes, one school holding that she wears the same pale cream ones and has them cleaned, and the other holding she throws them away like Kleenex.

Surprisingly, although one may well imagine bearers staggering under a load of 16 trunks, Mrs. Kennedy actually travels with two large footlockers plus six assorted smaller suitcases. Her principal secret weapon is her maid, Mrs. Providencia Paredes, who is always so discreet that she is nearly invisible– so much so, in fact, that the Kennedys almost left Vienna last spring without her. Mrs. Paredes carries a steam iron wherever she goes and wields it with extraordinary skill.

….

The utmost discretion has been observed about the Kennedy coiffure.
Throughout the safari, as the rest of the females in her party grew gradually rumpled, then wilted and finally vanished in a pool of butter like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, Mrs. Kennedy’s flowing tresses survived an overnight train ride, two boat rides and two weeks of one-night stands. Through all this her hair looked precisely as it had the day she left. This is obviously impossible without aid; the finger of suspicion in this delicate subject points to Mrs. William Laton of New York City, listed in the party as Princess Radziwill’s maid and secretary. There is speculation that Mrs. Laton keeps a hair dryer in her typewriter case.

The most impressive part of Mrs. Kennedy’s dress, however, was the visual impact of the colors she chose for each occasion. A French artist who is a member of our troupe remarked, “She must have studied terribly carefully. Every dress she wears becomes a marvelous spot of color, like the bright spot that holds your eye in Persian miniatures. The pale apricot silk she wore for the boat ride on Pichola Lake was wonderful against these pink-tinged castles in the water.”

….

One of the most noticeable side effects of Mrs. Kennedy’s wardrobe has been its influence on the traditionally dowdy female press corps. Two lady reporters are now carrying, in addition to typewriters, hatboxes, containing wigs, and three take notes while wearing little white gloves.

Personally, as a familiar of Mrs. Kennedy, I must say that it is not the penchant for haute couture which makes the lady, but her exquisite manners and charming personality. As you can see from the paintings recently completed by the artist who has rendered my half-portrait, the First Lady was a sparkling conversationalist and was able to put her interlocutors at ease, whether they be a military dictator, a prime minister, her sister, or a horse, such as myself.

Many of us were surprised to learn that the actor who performed the role of Kumar in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle with such panache will now be starring in the film version of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel the Namesake. There will be lots of publicity on this in the coming weeks; but for now, sepoy has forwarded me this intriguing interview with Kal Penn about his new movie.

While CM was being hacked, some of your correspondents ended up getting hijacked by the trendiest new web presence in town, my.barackobama.com. Within moments of the site’s inception, we began to feverishly collect friends, join groups and start movements. But now that the site is already five days old, the bloom has faded from the rose and we are ready to come home. We are not sure if, after all, we wish to be part of a nationwide email conversation about how much, how very very much, we want our guy to kick the cig habit, or how it might be fun to have a ginormous sixty minute conference call with fellow supporters across the nation.

We still love the man, and it being Valentine’s Day, we’re here to express that, despite concerns about his handling of the whole madrassa issue, and other worries yet to be discovered. So in honor of his dignity, which is being vigorously shredded from all sides, we’ve gone photoshopping for a pretty new t-shirt to help him cover his nakedness, since he is still apparently somewhat miffed about the People mag papparazzo shot. As in the sad tale of the toothsome Gavin Newsom, who learned too late, after being caught with his pants figuratively down, that all those hair gel articles recalled a simpler, happier time, the Obamalator needs to understand that he should count himself lucky when he has only been exposed literally.

First in a series of posts on the junior senator from Illinois.

Gary Cooper: Perfect. It’s a matter of fact. Everything about you is perfect.

Audrey Hepburn: I’m too thin and my ears stick out, my teeth are crooked and my neck’s much too long.

Gary Cooper: Maybe so, but I love the way it all hangs together.

–Love in the Afternoon

Like Cooper’s character in Love in the Afternoon, we’re terribly jaded: we’ve lived the capitalist high life and rolled with all sorts of exotic dames, Swedish twins, Spanish princesses, you name it. Frightened Republicans, cranky pessimistic Democrats and The Main-Stream Media alike may ridicule us for our sudden infatuation with the new pair of ankles in town, but what they don’t understand is that like Ms. Hepburn, Senator Obama is the real deal. You can get to Hepburn’s waif-weight on a steady diet of club-hopping, methamphetamine and cocaine cut with strawberry Quik, or you can get there by gnawing on tulip bulbs in the basement during the Dutch Famine. You could achieve the grace and poise of Hepburn by hiring a personal trainer and doing pilates every day or you could get there by cutting short your training as a professional ballet dancer due to poverty-induced malnutrition. Similarly, you could give speeches as well as Obama by hiring a stable-full of professional speech writers, or you could get there by spending a lifetime reading literature and honing the craft of writing. You could adopt a message of hope, non-partisanship and reconciliation after consulting with a team of highly paid pollsters, or you could hold such a message as a conviction, a lesson learned through personal experience and public service.

The mood around the Obamanan has a lunatic edge, primarily because it is far too difficult for anyone to believe in the notion of the genuine article. Pundits are disturbed by his unrelentingly rock star appeal because it hasn’t been hand-crafted by them. Even ‘experts’ and journalists who are ostensibly on his side are poised and ready to spring into a much anticipated maelstrom of negativity when the time comes. No one wants to be the naive one who canonized the rising star too soon. In anticipation of the fall of Obama ( cause for speculation as early as March 2006 by the NYT), everyone is jumping on the superficiality bandwagon as fast as they can. We are deluged daily by a perplexing array of critiques of Obama’s physical appearance (eye candy!), clothing (business casual!) and name (Iraq! Saddam Hussein! Osama bin Laden!). The name bit, an embarrassing act of desperation, results of course from the rightist spin machine: maybe we can get people to think he has something to do with those things! True, many people still do not know who Barack Obama is and give rise to news reports like this and this that make us fear still further for the intelligence of our populace, but lack of name recognition isn’t the sort of thing that lasts long around a public figure who appears on Oprah,the Daily Show and Larry King, and introduces Monday Night Football.

And then there’s Obama and fashion. Maureen Dowd, doing her best come-hither-Barack wink, while simultaneously not wanting to look dumb if he turns out not to be all that, seems to have gotten the ball rolling. With her piece ‘Project Obama,’ she warns the object of her affections not to get carried away with all the adulation lest he come to appear too light in the loafers for the job of Commander-in-Chief. This time her TV Guide metaphor-du-jour is Project Runway, and she wrings her hands at the prospect of Obama, with his Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Men’s Vogue, appearances on Oprah and a little too much time spent at the gym, ending up as everyone’s favorite celebrity guest star. She closes with the dramatic and thought-provoking punchline, “Does Barack Obama want to be a celebrity or a man of history, or is there no longer any difference?”

The fashionisto in Obama is all the rage now, most strangely in this

exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield, which Greenfield now

claims was a joke:

GREENFIELD: The senator was in New Hampshire over the weekend, sporting what’s getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie….But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of “GQ” to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable.

Whether or not this was, in fact, a joke, clearly the most insulting part of it all is being compared to the distinctly unfelicitous sartorial style of Ahmadinejad, who, politics aside, is a man who wears white socks with leather shoes and whose suits and dress shirts clearly contain no small number of synthetic fibers.

In fact, it is the article in Men’s Vogue which takes no interest in Obama’s sartorial choices, and the Annie Leibovitz photo spread unveils the Junior Senator from Illinois wearing his own clothing, with no apparent attempts at pre-shoot styling. The combined article and photographs contain so little reference to appearances or the fashion world that one is led to wonder just what the gang over at Vogue is up to. As one skeptical participant in the Men’s Vogue discussion boards, sir_elton, reflects plaintively, “Obama didn’t look right. He wasn’t pressed. Not presidential in my book. Who chose those clothes, anyway? Was that A.L.?”

Well that’s just it, kids. Barack Obama doesn’t need a stylist because the man’s got original style. Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, High Priestess of Style, knows this. The article in MV is remarkable because it lets Obama speak for himself, through his writings, speeches and conversation. The Leibovitz photos shoot him doing the things he does in the clothes he wears (which, granted, are quite tasteful). And, most arrestingly, we learn that his most stylish asset is his command of language. One hears and reads very often that Obama has ‘boatloads of charisma’; that he speaks eloquently; that he writes well. But in the context of the language skills and rhetoric of, let’s say, all politicians today, that means nothing. The fact is that Obama writes and speaks beautifully.

Can there be any other politician who has as strong a policy regarding semi-colons and lists? From his elegant and looong post to Daily Kos, in which he makes the fascinating argument that liberals should be nicer to the Democrats who voted for Judge Roberts, even though he himself voted against him (and the way the list is embedded in a set of double dashes– it just gives you the shivers):

I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster — a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations– blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.

And how many people quote the poetry of Borges to discuss their turn toward religion (‘a choice, not an epiphany‘)? How many people quote the poetry of Borges at all? And this quote is from a love poem:

“I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

“I think Borges is talking to a mistress or lover” Obama said. “But that kernel that is untouched;that doesn’t traffic in the trivial or the mean or the petty;that sounds like God to me.”

(In the previous line of the poem, rather confusingly in this context, the narrator states,

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

This last being, no doubt, a priceless thing to offer, but probably the sort of association one should avoid as a politician. But he didn’t quote that part, and he acknowledges it is not a poem about religion, but a love poem, and it probably doesn’t matter that it was allegedly written for his comely young apprentice, Adolfito Bioy-Casares, by an elderly Borges, in English, in honor of their ‘English Friendship’.)

And when have we heard a public figure intelligently discuss the role of religious imagery in the rhetoric of politics, instead of just pumping more and more hackneyed phrases and tired cliches into the atmosphere?

“If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice,” he argued. “Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King;the majority of great reformers in American history;were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity.”

Obama is indeed a man of style, but that style stretches far beyond a make of clothing, an aspect of his physical appearance, or an over-abundance of charm. It’s not Project Runway style, it’s Chicago Manual of style. And we just love the way it all hangs together.

[rejected by US Weekly]

They’re CRAZY about celebrities!

Dictators can meet any celebrity they want. They can even kidnap them and force them to make movies for them while they eat live lobsters with silver chopsticks. But that doesn’t mean a dictator can’t be starstruck. Chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the notorious Kim Jong-il can’t believe his good luck: he’s standing right next to the beautiful and talented singer Kim Ryon Ja!

They LOVE their pressure cookers!

President of Cuba and Comandante of the Cuban military Fidel Castro loves to cook with Chinese pressure cookers! Not only are they energy-saving for his entire nation, but they really lock in the flavors of meats and vegetables…without boiling out all the nutritional content, like with regular pots and pans! Usually people share cookery tips with their friends and family without expecting everyone to set up their kitchens the way they do, but when you’re a dictator, you can command everyone else in your country use your favorite cooking utensils too. It’s just like being Martha Stewart or Emeril Lagasse, only with a whole country, and not just a franchise and a series of trend-setting media appearances.

They can’t ignore a GREAT pair of legs!

President of Pakistan, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistani military and celebrated memoirist General Pervez Musharraf: a guy thinks he’s got everything he could possibly want and then some cute little thing in a short skirt waltzes by and he realizes he may be a military dictator, but he’s only human!

They can’t keep their minds off HAUTE COUTEUR!

President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the US Military George W. Bush is no stranger to the catwalks of Fashion Week. Our Dubya just can’t disguise his admiration for right-hand gal Condi’s stylish evening duds on the occasion of a state dinner at India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan. When you’re the Emperor of the Free World, you can feel free to feast your eyes on all the high fashion you want! No wonder George B. chose the finest dressed dominatrix in the land to send forth his message of dominion to the Four Seas!

They let their wives dress them up in MIX ‘N’ MATCH outfits!

Executive President of Zimbabwe and Chancellor of all Zimbabwean universities, Robert Mugabe may intend to rule his nation with an iron fist until he turns 100 years old, but when it comes to picking out the Dictator’s outfits, his lovely and talented wife Grace is the Commander-in-Chief!

Was I the last person to find out that the Iranian pop diva Googoosh is making a comeback and living in the United States and Canada now? I have painted her portrait in honor of this exciting news. There are all sorts of delectable websites devoted to Googoosh, including her own, official site, and Googoosh TV which includes loads of MP3s.

I first learned about Googoosh about six years ago, when I saw a terrible documentary about her. The film was focused on post-Revolution suppression of her voice and, more importantly, the filmmaker’s obsession with Googoosh as an absent presence and a pop icon. He was unable to or not allowed to interview Googoosh for the film, so the whole thing ends up being about her absence and her silence, only not in a way that could be described as interesting or artistic. The overall effort reminded me of a translation of a Marathi short story I read years ago by Vilas Sarang, in which a historian takes a tape recorder around to all the Indian monuments and ‘records the silences’ of the historical sites.

The Googoosh documentary seems to now be available on DVD. I think this is the same one I saw, though from the Amazon reviews it is, as always, hard to tell whether something is bad or good. Highlights include:

-This film is an insult to Googoosh and to filmmaking.

-If we give the content to a professional editor and producer they probably can make a good 45min documentary out of the whole 150min repeated content so if you are familiar with home video editing it worth buying the DVD and editing it yourself!

The film was in fact ‘hamstrung’ by the complete absence of Googoosh. I came away wondering what she looked like and what her music sounded like. That’s how I became a fan, so maybe it was worth something. But apparently, right around the time that the documentary was released 2000, Googoosh was finally granted a passport by the Iranian government, allowing her to travel outside the country and perform. Since then she has recorded a couple of new albums and has even settled down in Tehrangeles. Perhaps Mr. Zamani should now re-edit his film to make her absent presence present.

One day we will look back at YouTube, like we look back at Napster. Until that sordid day arrives, my blogging duties are so much simpler [yes, yes, i have some actual posts coming. I swear.] Enjoy the Lil’ Superstar.

The track is Holiday Rap by DJ Sven and Miker G [also a must-see!]. All hail the great blake for the 411.

The alternative society created in part by Hollywood myopia, and the cynicism-or, depending on your point of view, foresight of The Passion‘s marketers, has come to fruition. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has decided to exercise what the press and Congressional Republicans call the ‘nuclear option’ to make it easier for Senate Republicans to bring cloture to filibusters, the Democratic party’s last vestige of power. The Senate’s own website tells us:

Instead of justifying his reasons for altering Senate procedures to reduce the power of the minority and eliminate a frustrating, if useful, tradition to the editorial board of the New York Times, or on Meet the Press, or some other secular outlet, Frist plans to build a groundswell of support using the channels of Evangelical America’s parallel, influential, and increasingly mainstream, culture.

The lemmings at America’s 4th place television network won’t be outdone. Attempting to meet this demon where it lives, they’ve offered up Revelations (sic). Here, instead of an exploitation of the new Christian reality, we’re given–at least in the first episode–a great example of how Hollywood doesn’t understand American Christian spirituality, and why American Christians hate Hollywood.

Farangi’s notes on the script:

The super-sexy co-protagonist is a Catholic nun. I don’t get why producers and writers insist on using Catholicism as the de facto representation of American Christianity in entertainment. Only in the last century did Roman Catholics even comprise a plurality of American Christians. Even today, where most Americans are Christians, most are Protestant, and most American Protestants are – gasp – Southern Baptist. I suspect this disconnect survives because Catholicism holds a measure of old-world spookiness for non-believers that makes for good visuals; also, because Catholicism is innately hierarchical, its systems are easier to grasp, especially in the morning, at your word processor, with a huge hangover, with Cliff’s Notes on the Bible and Dummie’s Guide to the Apocalypse beneath your roach-littered ashtray.

It should be noted that the modern Catholic church doesn’t publicly stress or fret or obsess about the “end of days,” in the ways we’re used to from Protestants. Chances are good the guy you dodge in the sandwich board every morning is a Protestant. Also, Sexxy Sista comes from a group called the ‘Eckland Foundation’ which a group of evil doctors refer to as a “fundamentalist group seeking to prove the end of the world is real.” This might refer to a Catholic group, but that’s unlikely, especially since our nun has a degree of autonomy not often seen in Catholic women in vocations. This sounds a lot like the Chick Group or some other overfunded nuthouse. Such groups believe the Catholic Church is the “Great Whore Babylon” and the Pope is at least an anti-Christ, if not the anti-Christ. That a nun would affiliate with such a group stresses credulity. In addition, the nun’s positive offering of Tibetan necromancy as exemplary support for the notion that the dead might speak through the living gives too much ecumenical credit to the Church. We’re still arguing over Transubstantiation, folks. It’ll be a while before we look kindly upon marching the dead up to the podium for the keynote. Please.

The super-stoic co-protagonist is a Harvard semi-scientist who lost his daughter to a Satanic ritual killer, whom he visits in prison like Starling calling on Lecter. The Satanist character, frankly, has the depth of my empties’ backwash. The Satanism thing is as weak as it is tired, and what’s worse is that our writer (who allegedly wrote the scary-as-shit Omen and should know better) seems to have merged the Occult and Satanism, as shown by a lazy mix of anecdote, motif and dialogue. The character spouts longwinded speeches, quotes the bible, fixates on the “game of hearts,” and is the subject of awed respect by those who deal with him.

Satanists are by definition within the Judeo-Christian tradition, because they agree to its premises but protest them through sacrilege. In fact, Satanism as we know it is the product of 1950′s San Fransisco, and a former carnie named Anton LaVey. The thoughts buttressing Satanism existed for centuries, but it took LaVey to bundle them to a cache of Nietzche and anonymous esoteric texts–some of them quite interesting from historical, literary and philosophical perspectives and, prior to Lavey smudging them, worthy of further critical examination–declare them a ‘Satanic Bible’ found a ‘church’ and commence to hosting highly theatrical orgies with starlets like Jayne Mansfield and bon vivants like Sammy Davis, Jr.

LaVey’s inverted pentagram glyph, made a fetish by 80′s metal bands, is an explicit rejection of the ‘Occult’ which we shall call, for the sake of space, a mutant amalgamation of some of Europe and Asia’s pre-Christian philosophical and religious traditions–necessarily outside the Christian tradition. Most occult traditions respect the pentagram as a symbol of the completeness of man’s relationship to natural cycles, hence LaVey’s inversion-i.e., man transcendent over all moral strictures.

Further, I was struck by the weirdly awed comment of a prison guard, describing the Satanist character: “He says he only needs to breathe once a minute, and then goes into a trance.” Now, basic knowledge of the Occult will tell you that the 1:4:2 ratio one-minute breath cycle comes into ‘Western” consciousness from Arthur Avalon, Aliester Crowley, and H.P. Blavatsky, and was cribbed from Central Asian Sufis and Indian Yogis.

The most cursory application of the scientific method will demonstrate that this is actually called ‘meditation’ or, even ‘prayer’ and is unworthy of mention, or awe from a prison guard. This confusion shows contempt for the intelligence of its audience. Its facile employment of the ‘other” is more evidence of Hollywood stupidity and reliance on irresponsible portrayls of ideals and traditions for the quick jolt. Its lack of nuance exempifies further to the dumbing of America from on high.

In addition, as though to deflect criticism aimed toward the pilfered Lecter character, the writer actually draws more on a character whose copyright has long expired. The Satanist character is an inferior facsmilie of Stoker’s Reinfeld, who in Dracula howls the way as the vampire’s John the Baptist. Instead of an asylum, we have a prison, instead of the vampire, we have the Anti-Christ. I’m all about a cover tune, yo, but damn. Try to make it yours, or do it better.

I have nothing further to write of Pullman or his character-self proclaimed, alas, ‘scientist, realist, Devil’s advocate’ except that Pullman the man seems mortified to be playing this role, and what passes for his bewilderment and grief at the loss of his daughter actually seems, on further examination, to be hate for his fellow cast members. Cut-to’s of old interviews with Carl Sagan and the staff of the scientific fundamentalists at CSICOP would be more enlightening and entertaining. At least we wouldn’t be waiting for their inevitable conversion, a la X-files Scully.

The exploitation of the Schaivo tragedy is so horrible here that the NBC execs who greenlighted this turkey-or changes to this turkey-should be tarred and feathered. A prophesying dead girl, struck by lightning and in, I shit you not, ‘a persistent vegetative state’ is in constant danger of having her organs harvested by greedy athiest doctors and skeptical hospital staff, who, because the girl is a ward of the state, aren’t making any money by keeping her alive. They actually stalk her via security camera like vultures, awaiting a legal excuse to flip the switch. Conflicting decisions come from various courts-each side picking its legal champions, and the only real thing keeping the girl alive is that she occasionally shouts in Latin, and draws pictures identical to the ones Pullman’s character’s daughter drew before the Satanist cut her heart out. Enter the plaigarisation of Blatty’s Exorcist, Stigmata, and the talking Sturgeon that a few years back terrorized some Orthodox Jews in New York. It’s refreshing for me to see smug doctors and the medical-pharmaceutical establishment in for a drubbing as the story’s initial antagonists, but would it have been so hard not to completely ape the real-life, and far more complicated, tragedy in Florida? Shame. Shame on them.

Tomorrow, another exegesis. And we’ll talk about Jenkins and LaHaye, and why the best selling books in the history of publishing are a dramatization of the modern premillenial dispensationalist understanding of the ‘end times’ and how that understanding has less to do with scripture and tradition and more, so much more, to do with geopolitics and the rise of the American right.

I don’t get to watch much t.v., except for Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. Couple of years ago, we got hooked on 24 in its second season. I thought it was wonderful Camp (dead serious, extravagent, predictable for its infantile fixation on “twists”). I didn’t see the last season but we taped and watched the four episodes of the new season which started Sunday. Frank Rich, in the NYT, already wrote up this new season’s dramatic return to Middle Eastern terrorists. And a return it is. The terrorists are all off the set of 1994 True Lies – swarthy, sweaty men in fatigues with klashnikovs. The masterminds, so far, are a Persian(?) family cell who have been plotting their mayhem for 4 or 5 years. Even the rebellious 16 year old son is down with the program, complete with a unibrow. Muslim-Americans are center square as sleeper cells and terrorists amongst us. I would feel bad for a 16 yr. Muslim kid in Peoria going to school after watching these episodes but I am too busy being entertained. Also, ripped right from the headlines is the delicious irony of seeing the sec. of defense in Gitmo/AbuGharib orange jumpsuit taking down the terrorists with an AK-47. Rummy who?

Anyways, what has caught my eye so far is that “torture” issue is magnificently highlighted. What with A. Gonzales hearing and the Abu Gharib trial in the news, one wouldn’t have clear thinking on such a crucial issue – human rights and all. 24 tells you straight away: You gotta bring them in the House of Pain. Traditional methods are not getting our heroes anywhere so Jack has to shoot a terrorist (who despite being a top planning guy never learned to wear a disguise, or at least, a toupe√à) in the knee to make him spill. Awesome. Torture works. Next up, is the son of the sec. of defense. He is hiding something. Immediately, torture is authorized but the interrogator recoils from using some chemical and sissies out by doing sensory deprivation tricks from the 70s. Hopefully, Jack will get back to CTU soon and shoot this kid in the knee as well. And this is only in the first few episodes.

I look forward to next week’s show.

We discovered Buffy: The Vampire Slayer late – in the seventh season. And thanks only to sven. Now, I admit, I am hooked. I love the humor, mainly. But, there are others to whom Buffyverse is a vast, uncharted space for interstatial observations.
There is Ken Kuykendall, a Mormon youth leader, who uses Buffy to teach Christ.
There is a literary theory thriller where Buffy stands in for pomo-bashing.
There is philosophy.
And, after all that is said and done: there is The Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. An academic affair that attracted philosophers, theologians, physicists(?) and literary critics. Some papers that caught my attention:

• Structural Identity, or Saussure Visits Buffy/Angel’s World: What’s the Difference? – AmiJo Comeford (University of Nevada at Las Vegas)
• Renegotiating Identity: Viewing the Post 9/11 Buffyverse in a Post 9/11 World. – Jill Gorman (Rollins College)
• Im/Material Girl: Abjection, Penetration, and the Postmodern Body on BtVS. – Jasmine Hall (Elms College)
• “Oh Stay! You Are So Beautiful”: Angel the Vampire Faust. – Angela Lin† (Vanderbilt University)
• Buffy Slays Walt Disney. – Katia McClain (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Russian Existentialism and Vampire Slayage: A Shestovian Key to the Power and Popularity of BtVS. – J. M. Richardson and J. D. Rabb (Lakehead University)
• Warrior Heroes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Beowulf. – David Fritts (Henderson Community College)
• “Il y a” the Vampire Slayer: Encountering Levinas Through “Hush”. – Christopher Berry (Purdue University)
• “Don’t Speak Latin in Front of the Books”: Knowledge, Power, and History in BtVS. – Jennifer Welsh (Duke University)
• “Actually, No Wheeling Is More My Specialty”: Why Buffy Doesn’t Drive. – Brett Rogers and Walter Scheidel (Stanford University), Distinguished Speaker
• “Why don’t you just go back where you came from?” Aspects of Post-Colonial Theory in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. – Russ Jackson
• Magic, Classical Physics, and the Conservation of Energy and Matter. – Scott Speakman (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
• Self Becoming or Becoming Self? A Comparative Study of Buffy and the Hindu Saint Antal on Identity and Self-Realization. – Tracy Tiemeier (Boston College)
• “This Is How Many Apocalypses for Us Now?”: The Buffyverse Apocalyptic and Premillenialist Christianity. – Lisa Roy Vox (Emory University)
• A Vampire Is Being Beaten: De Sade Through the Looking Glass in Buffy and Angel. – Jenny Alexander (University of Sussex, Falmer)
• The Male Hero in Feminist Society: Comparisons of Buffy’s Spike and the Iroquois’ Hiawatha. – Linda Jencson (Appalachian State University)

So, today, we are gonna go and pick up a copy of the 6th season DVD and I am going to start studying over the long weekend. yeah.

I am stunned by this makeover madness on the telly. In my nightly crawl of cable, I see people get makeovers for their cars, their houses, their partners, their careers, their pets, their face, their bodies.
On and on and on.

Americans have given up. Thrown their hands up in the air, and yelled to the Gods: We Sucketh. Expect Us Not to Organize, to Learn, to Manage, to Cope. And the Gods have answered with a crop of gay lifestyle experts, hunky carpenters, teams of surgeons, acerbic wits and Visa/MasterCard. Their dreams come true, they get a new wardrobe, a plasma tv, a new attitude, a new fame and we, the viewers, are satiated. Another one of us is rescued by the Gods. We cheer the triumph of a team of specialists with unlimited budgets over our lives’ most intractable problems. We hope we are next. A nation of 250 million awaits their makeover – one by one.

In this weird moment in American cultural history, the viewers of the 90s reality tv fad (Real World, Springer Show etc.) have become the participants of the new decade. No longer are we content with voyeurism of the freaks and geeks but we have to manifest our own identity as their opposites. We all deserve better. We should dress better, make more money, look prettier, have nicer friends, have passionate sex, and millions should KNOW us. Oprah can sell us a contract and allow us to overcome ourselves. The makeover shows give us all the help we need to finally free the “real” me trapped under bad fashion and bad fat.

What I would like to know is, where does it go? Will the audience grow impatient with the rate of makeovers? Will we have mobs of people hunting experts down? Where is the makeover madness taking us? I can tell that for one, it is taking us to EXTREME editions. Sure, but is that all? Aren’t there bigger issues than teen body image problems arising out of Swan? The very ethos of can-do, do-all Americana is at risk, I venture.