A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers

Who are bloggers? Why do they blog?

If you are a blogger, like me, you probably have a personal reason to blog. Whatever be that reason, many people, both outside and within the blogging community, wonder why bloggers blog. What is their motivation? What is their gain? And, as many bloggers are reticent in providing their personal profile, some using a pseudonym to remain in anonymity (I’m guilty here!), many people wonder who these bloggers are.

While surfing the internet in order to find answers to these questions, I came across an interesting research done a year ago in the United States by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist, and Susannah Fox, Associate Director, who conducted this research, present their report, ‘Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers’ (that’s right, this post’s title is taken from their report) for all of us to read.

Their findings are quite interesting and I’ve listed the main points below. If you are a blogger, see if you fit in there somewhere. Do keep in mind that the research was conducted in the United States and may not reflect bloggers globally. You can also access the PDF file of the report here.

Here are the key points from that research:

Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world.

The blogging population is young, evenly split between women and men, and racially diverse.

Broadband is the norm among bloggers, as is going online several times each day.

Bloggers are avid online news readers, particularly political news.

Bloggers prefer balanced sources of news.

Newspapers, television, and radio are also part of bloggers’ daily news diet.

Bloggers are highly engaged with tech-based social interaction.

For most, blogging is a hobby, not an activity that consumes their lives.

Blogging is usually the first foray into authorship; bloggers blog to express themselves creatively and share personal experiences.

Most bloggers do not confine themselves to one topic.

Personal experiences are the most popular topic, but politics, entertainment, and sports are also frequently discussed.

Personal experiences provide the most inspiration for bloggers.

Half of bloggers keep one blog and most do not share authorship with anyone else.

More than half of bloggers use a pseudonym.

Only a third of bloggers think their blog is a form of journalism.

Most bloggers post infrequently.

Seven in ten bloggers post when inspiration strikes, not on a set schedule.

The typical blogger spends about two hours per week on their blog.

Most bloggers have blogged three years or less.

Most blog from home.

LiveJournal tops the list of blogging sites in this survey.

Text dominates most blogs, but one-third of bloggers post audio files.

Blogging for pay is rare.

Most expect to be blogging a year from now.

Most bloggers post material for themselves, but one-third blog mostly to engage their audience.

Blogs gain attention, if only at a personal level.

Half of bloggers believe their audience is mostly people they know.

Blog writers are enthusiastic blog readers.

Nearly nine in ten bloggers allow comments to be posted on their blog.

Four in ten bloggers have a blogroll and most keep the list to under 50 blogs.

Few offer an RSS feed, possibly because many bloggers are not aware of the technology.


[Citation: ‘Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers’. Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 19, 2006. Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist and Susannah Fox, Associate Director.]

A public spectacle

I write two blogs as ‘runawaysun’: ‘sunstruck’, an opinionated polemic on world issues which I’ve been writing for two years now; and, more recently, a confessional, chronicled in ‘Unsettled Views’. There was a third – a team blog – titled ‘the immigrant experience’ which was, sadly, discontinued after a year. Some of its posts reflected current immigrant experiences, but the rest was firmly locked into the past.

‘sunstruck’ is rational, assertive and perhaps a little confrontational, bringing out my masculine values. A friend had once commented that ‘sunstruck’ gave her the feeling the blogger was angry and unhappy about the world. She had preferred my ‘the immigrant experience’ posts which were autobiographical fiction. “Nice stories,” she had said. “Ever thought of publishing them in a book?”

“But, they are published!” I had exclaimed. “They are on my blog, dammit!” But she had tut-tutted me out of my elated feelings of being a blogger. “Publishing a book,” she had said, “is at a much higher level. Authoring a book is what makes people famous; not blogging. Blogging is just a public spectacle. Most of it contains meaningless rants. Very little of it gets any readers anyway.”

I thought long and hard about this. And, as I write this post, I’m still reflecting on her words. Could she be right? Does blogging mean nothing in the world of publishing and authorship? Did I know any bloggers who had published books to their credit? Sadly, I couldn’t think of any.

Autobiographical

As it is with books, blogs are attributed to their authors. Hence, in most cases, authorship in a blog is a deciding factor in the blog’s readership and success.

Since it is difficult to deduce the identity of a blogger from the contents of a blogger’s ‘profile’ page (the ‘profile’ page is rather amateurish in its construction, if you ask me, with lists of books and movies and music leading nowhere in particular), readers try to imagine what the blog’s author is all about from his/her (or their, if it’s a team blog) posts.

That’s because, most readers feel – and deduce – that the blogger is present in the contents of his/her posts. Thereby, acceding to the fact that blogs and blogging are autobiographical in nature.

I believe, since blogs are fragmentary in their construction, unlike books which are complete, it is difficult to imagine the profile of a blogger from his/her posts. As much as readers try to find meaning in the blogger’s words and piece together an identity which is likely to fit the blogger, the blogger, too, experiments with his/her identity and tries to find meaning from these experiments in his/her blog.

And so, over the years, and hundreds of posts, a relationship slowly develops between a blogger and his/her readers.

A man of posts (not letters)

My blog has defined me as a man of posts. It’s not, perhaps, a true definition of who I am, but it is a description of what I do with my blog.

Unlike collaborative efforts like Wikipedia (or a conventional print encyclopedia) where individual authors remain invisible, my blog gives me instant visibility. It gives me ownership of what I write – and responsibility for it. It gives me a voice, a consistent identifiable voice, which creates a persona most conventional authors of books enjoy. My blogger profile provides a contour to this persona, but it’s the content of my posts which really determines who I am to my readers.

Since each post is stamped with a date and time, and archived (in a backward chronological order) by the blogging software, my readers can discern my mood and personality from my posts – something authors of books cannot share with their readers. But, that’s not all. I can hyperlink and connect my posts to other relevant material on cyberspace, thereby laterally expanding the horizon of my posts… and their contents.

What my blog also provides is a quick interaction with my readers through the feature of ‘comments’ – an almost-instant feedback mechanism unavailable to authors of books. It’s like having a conversation with my readers, exchanging views on my posts, some of which have inspired me to re-think my views and temper my blog posts in the future. All of which is on public view on cyberspace.

Conventionally, the alternative to this is a laborious and time-consuming exchange of letters, where authors have to rely on readers taking the trouble of writing letters to publishers, hoping the letters would be passed on to them faithfully. Then there is still the matter of the author responding to these letters, which is assuredly a private matter.

I am now an author

Thanks to blogs, I am now an author.

In the olden days, being an author was an achievement. It meant writing something sensible, presenting it to a publisher, and seeking an opinion. Most paths led to rejections, of course. Only those with real merit were shown to an editor – a person with literary knowledge – in a publisher’s office.

After several drafts and editing, the manuscript was made ready for publishing. That meant taking decisions on typography, formatting, cover design, paper selection, binding and print runs. Then came the hassle of distribution – reaching the printed book to prospective readers through a trade channel, the last of which was the bookstore.

For the journalist, the scholar, the poet and the short story writer, life was a little less rigorous. It meant a journey as far as the editor’s desk in a newspaper or a magazine, where a binary decision ended it all. While some authors were published, others got the thumbs down signal. Justice was swift, though some writers have complained about its fairness and quality.

In the olden days, being an author depended on intellectual prowess, grammar and creativity. It depended on labour and luck. It depended on possessing the right credentials for acceptance by editors and publishers. And, it depended on their professional (and merciful) judgment. Nothing was achieved otherwise.

Today, thanks to blogging software, I can set up my blog in three easy steps. I can write whatever I want and publish it simply by posting it online with a click of my mouse. I don’t need intellectual prowess, creativity or credentials. And to hell with grammar! It doesn’t even matter if I can spell properly, or at all.

Labour means tapping away on my computer keyboard for an hour. And the only luck I need is with my broadband connection.

Moreover, I can choose my blog format from a collection of colourful templates. I can illustrate my posts with drawings and photos. I can add music and video. I can even link my writing to other published material on the Internet.

And, distribution? Well, the whole world is my marketplace.

To be an author

Michael Malone is a great technology/business writer. His book ‘The Virtual Corporation’ – co-authored with William Davidow – from the early 1990s is one of the best books I’ve read on the evolution of the new organisation, fuelled by the IT revolution. What I also like about Michael Malone is his subtle sense of humour which he never fails to bring into his writing.

For instance, when his latest book ‘Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built The World’s Greatest Company’ – a story on Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the founders of HP – was recently published, this is what Michael Malone had to write about what it means to be an author, in an article ‘To Be an Author Again’ published in last week’s ABC News’ Silicon Insider column:

“I’ve written a total of seven, or 13, books. That indeterminacy is due to how one defines authorship. For example, I once hosted the public television series “A Parliament of Minds” in which I interviewed more than a dozen of the world’s leading philosophers. The two university professors who produced the series and hired me to host decided to publish the book under their own names -- and indeed not to even tell me about it, despite the fact that almost every word of it is mine or my guests. So, even though you can’t find that book under my name, I count it is as mine, dammit.

Then there is “One Digital Day,” which was one of those classic “day in the life of” coffee table photo books created by Rick Smolan and his team. It’s most assuredly his book, but since I wrote all the essays, I also count it as mine. And, of course, there are the three collaboration books – “The Virtual Corporation,” “Virtual Selling” and “Intellectual Capital” -- that I co-authored with pretty famous guys. They go on my list, but they also go on theirs -- and readers continue to assume that I was merely the dumb scribe (wrong) and they were the illiterate visionaries (also wrong).

In the end, it doesn’t much matter. When you start out in the writing business, your dream is to get out of the day-to-day newspaper and magazine writing, which you assume gives your creations a limited life-expectancy, and finally get into the world of book writing, which is really important -- and immortal.”

In this ABC News article, Michael Malone gives an interesting perspective to writing in the (fast) changing IT and Internet age. It’s quite an amusing anecdote for an oldie like me who knows what Malone is talking about, since I’ve grown up with punched card systems and 8-bit computers.

For the younger generation which has grown up on Pentium systems and iMacs, this is just a page out of the technology history book. But it still makes for interesting reading. So, take a look at Michael Malone’s article ‘To Be an Author Again’ in its entirety on ABC News here (4 pages). Plus, his experience in becoming a writer is invaluable to all budding writers.

Authorship

A collaborative project like Wikipedia is an interesting phenomenon, particularly because it’s done for free. Those who contribute to Wikipedia – and other social news sites (see my previous post ‘Hidden influencers’) – do so in their own volition, without asking for a fee for their effort. None is offered to them anyway. [There are a few exceptions, like Netscape.]

In fact, on online social news sites, or for that matter, on all websites that allow user participation (e.g. amazon.com or imdb.com), contributors can be identified by their Internet names and email IDs. On Wikipedia, however, contributors remain anonymous to us.

This made me wonder. What motivates these contributors to spend their time and energy as they do? What inspires them into reading, writing, editing, updating information, posting the edited matter, exercising their judgments for the benefit of others? Are they a new breed of social workers in our Internet age?

If so, then, are they spreading a silent message within us through their work? That, authorship – or the claim to authorship – is just a matter of ego? (Besides the cash and the awards that may come one’s way.)

Wikipedia revisited

A comment made on one of my previous posts (‘Shouldn’t we demand more?’) by a fellow blogger had me thinking. As she had commented, I must confess that I, too, regularly search for information in Wikipedia. And, as a first-off source of information, Wikipedia is pretty good.

Normally, in my work, I do not confine my search to Wikipedia alone and continue to research my topic, gathering information from various sources (some also from Wikipedia links), reading, assimilating and forming a certain point of view, before I use that information for my work. By that time, that ‘intelligence’ (if I may use that word) with which I work is no longer an exclusive product/derivative of Wikipedia, but a result of many other sources and intelligence, some of which may not even be available on the Internet.

So, in spite of its weakness (as I had blogged about earlier), Wikipedia is, indeed, a quick and convenient source of basic information. And, therefore, it is immensely useful to Internet users like us – whether or not we have access to more reputed sources like Encyclopedia Britannica or other industry journals. Or, we have data from our own field work, lab experiments and market research.

As users of the Internet, maybe what we should keep in mind is that Wikipedia, and similar sources of open-source information, need to be used for a specific purpose – the purpose of gathering basic information. We should then pursue other sources for more, and perhaps more qualitative, information before assimilating the facts and arriving at our own conclusions.

And, in our search, should we find information contrary to, or deviating from, our initial finding, we should be willing to ‘edit’ our information and our intelligence – even our views – as Wikipedia does. That’s because things change, new discoveries are made everyday. Information grows old by the hour. The danger, of course, lies in our sticking to Wikipedia, or any other source for that matter, as the only source of reliable information.

It’s not what Wikipedia is, but how we use it that determines the quality of our work and our conclusions. Isn’t that true for all tools, technologies, information and education?

Many thanks, Madhuri.

Hidden influencers

Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) online carried an article called ‘The Wizards of Buzz’ highlighting the popularity of social news sites, which were further popularising specific news stories and influencing people. Well, perhaps, not people in India, at least not in a major way, but definitely influencing the decisions of people in the United States. The article, written by Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen, said:

“A new generation of hidden influencers is taking root online, fueled by a growing love affair among Web sites with letting users vote on their favorite submissions. These sites are the next wave in the social-networking craze -- popularized by MySpace and Facebook. Digg is one of the most prominent of these sites, which are variously labeled social bookmarking or social news. Others include Reddit.com (recently purchased by Condé Nast), Del.icio.us (bought by Yahoo), Newsvine.com and StumbleUpon.com. Netscape relaunched last June with a similar format.”

How does this concept of social news and social networking work? Warren and Jorgensen from the same WSJ article explain:

“Most sites are based on a voting model. Members look around the Web for interesting items, such as video clips, blog entries or news articles. A member then writes a catchy description and posts it, along with a link to the material, on the site, in hopes that other members find it just as interesting and show their approval with an electronic thumbs-up vote. Items that receive enough votes rise in the rankings and appear on the front page, which can be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. When an item is submitted by a popular or influential member -- one whose postings are closely followed by fellow members -- it can have a much better shot at making the front page.”

Who are these influencers behind this new craze? Some of them we may never know as they go by their assumed Internet names, but the WSJ article mentions several, including Cliff Worthington (a 45-year-old English teacher in Osaka, Japan), Smaran Dayal (an 18-year-old student in Pune, India), Diane Put (a nutritionist in California, USA), Adam Fuhrer (a 12-year-old student in Toronto, Canada), Henry Wang (a 17-year-old student in Illinois, USA), among hundreds of others. There’s a small list of such influencers at the end of the WSJ article. Perhaps there are thousands more. Considering the fact that there are hundreds of millions of Internet users, the influencing power of these few thousand hidden influencers is substantial.

Just how substantial is their influence? It may be difficult to quantify their influence in pure numbers or money value, but the WSJ article gives us an indication of the extent to which it is applied:

“The opinions of these key users have implications for advertisers shelling out money for Internet ads, trend watchers trying to understand what’s cool among young people, and companies whose products or services get plucked for notice. It’s even sparking a new form of payola, as marketers try to buy votes.”

Adding further:

“Payola schemes depend on the voting system these sites employ. Some marketing companies promise clients they can get a client front-page exposure on Digg or one of the other social-bookmarking sites in exchange for a fee, according to marketers. To deliver on that promise, the company then recruits members at the site, offering to pay them for thumbs-up votes on the posting that links to the client. If enough paid-off members all vote for that posting, it could theoretically push the client’s link onto the front, where it receives wide exposure.”

There’s more, of course. So, why not read the whole WSJ article and find out for yourself what’s going on? You can find it all here.

Digital Maoism and the hive mind

Some quotes from Jaron Lanier, from his essay ‘Digital Maoism’ (Edge, May 2006):

“No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.”

“When you see the context in which something was written and you know who the author was beyond just a name, you learn so much more than when you find the same text placed in the anonymous, faux-authoritative, anti-contextual brew of the Wikipedia. The question isn't just one of authentication and accountability, though those are important, but something more subtle. A voice should be sensed as a whole. You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning. Personal Web pages do that, as do journals and books.”

“The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.”

“The reason the collective can be valuable is precisely that its peaks of intelligence and stupidity are not the same as the ones usually displayed by individuals. Both kinds of intelligence are essential.”

“Collectives can be just as stupid as any individual, and in important cases, stupider. The interesting question is whether it's possible to map out where the one is smarter than the many.”

“Every authentic example of collective intelligence that I am aware of also shows how that collective was guided or inspired by well-meaning individuals. These people focused the collective and in some cases also corrected for some of the common hive mind failure modes. The balancing of influence between people and collectives is the heart of the design of democracies, scientific communities, and many other long-standing projects. There's a lot of experience out there to work with. A few of these old ideas provide interesting new ways to approach the question of how to best use the hive mind.”

“Scientific communities likewise achieve quality through a cooperative process that includes checks and balances, and ultimately rests on a foundation of goodwill and "blind" elitism — blind in the sense that ideally anyone can gain entry, but only on the basis of a meritocracy. The tenure system and many other aspects of the academy are designed to support the idea that individual scholars matter, not just the process or the collective.”

“The hive mind should be thought of as a tool. Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true. There can be useful feedback loops set up between individuals and the hive mind, but the hive mind is too chaotic to be fed back into itself.”

[Citation: Edge, May 2006 – ‘Digital Maoism’, Jaron Lanier]

Information and accountability

Somewhere in my old family home in Kolkata, there is a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, bought in the seventies, in which certain sections have been ‘rubber-stamped off’ by the Indian government. These sections contain information about India from a political point of view, specifically on Kashmir and the border between India and Pakistan (including maps). The rubber stamp says something like “the information contained here is under dispute by the Government of India” and is, therefore, not to be trusted.

My initial reaction to this was anger at the government’s censorship of information in a democracy like India (apart from the disgust at seeing a beautifully-printed and expensive book messed up by purple non-erasable ink). I believed, then, the Indian government had violated one of the basic tenets in its own Constitution. It was only later, when I grew older, that I saw some sense in the government’s decision to apply this method of censorship. I realised that, along with information, comes accountability.

I believe, the providers of information are accountable for the accuracy, appropriateness and relevance of the information they provide us, whether they like it or not. It’s a serious responsibility; one that should not be played around with as I see it being done in the social news sites (like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, among others) which have cropped up, particularly with the advent of Web 2.0. Just because a news story is voted to be popular is not an indication of its accuracy.

Mind you, this is not about violating the freedom of speech. By all means, anyone can publish whatever they want, as long as they don’t violate any laws of the country they belong to. But, news needs to be reported and edited by competent (and impartial) journalists and editors. Not by citizens at large who may not know the facts of the matter, and yet, vote for a story because they simply liked it. Popularity of inaccurate news (and information) can be a dangerous thing!

Shouldn’t we demand more?

The doubt raised on the accuracy of information in Wikipedia’s content pages (see my previous post) is an interesting case against user-generated content in our freedom-loving and democratic world.

Should anyone and everyone be allowed to generate content on a website which describes itself as an online encyclopedia? I think not. After all, people consult encyclopedias for accuracy of information and balanced (impartial) points of view on specific topics.

For a moment, let us forget about Wikipedia, although its free online content, available in 250 languages, is immensely useful to millions of users across the world. Let us consider the principle on which an encyclopedia is created: the principle of knowledge, and the quality of it.

What if contributors to a printed encyclopedia, such as Encyclopedia Britannica, played mischief with this knowledge, misrepresenting it, adding a bias to suit their needs, or hiding the truth to further their agenda? Where would that leave us?

I agree that Wikipedia is a collaborative effort and, by the strength of the system, user/citizen editors would soon catch the misinformation and the misuse and correct them. They would catch the miscreants and sanction them. But, by then, millions of users across the world may already be misled.

On the same principles of democracy and freedom that are hallmarks of user-managed and/or collaborative websites like Wikipedia, shouldn’t we, as users, demand more?

Wikipedia's weakness

Every rumour has some truth in it. Which means every rumour also carries an element of doubt. You should not trust everything you hear in a rumour. And so, I must confess that the content of my previous post narrating the genesis of ‘Frankenstein’, the story by Mary Shelley, may not have been entirely factually correct.

You see, in spite of having done my homework on Wikipedia (it’s there in my citation), I may still be wrong. That’s because there’s a rumour going around that Wikipedia itself may be wrong. How so? Well, it seems Wikipedia is entirely manned by volunteers, many of whom may not possess in-depth knowledge on the subject they write about or edit for the benefit of millions of users like me.

In a recent brandchannel.com article analysing Wikipedia’s weakness, brand identity consultant Alycia de Mesa puts it plainly: “What many general users perceive as a fact-based encyclopedic resource for any given topic typed into the search window is actually a series of articles that may or may not be factually accurate and, in some cases, are incomplete or just flat-out wrong.”

In her brandchannel.com article, titled ‘Wikipedia: In brand we trust?’, Ms de Mesa quotes Gene Grabowski, senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications in Washington, DC saying, “Now we have something as important as an online encyclopedia for tens of millions of people, and anyone can go on and make an edit that might go unchecked for weeks or months or maybe never.”

Or worse, as Ms de Mesa clarifies, “…changes made to articles can be erased within minutes of posting by a volunteer administrator for reasons that may or may not be obvious or even warranted.” Adding later, “Because even the ‘administrators’ designated to oversee certain types of articles are all volunteers and are not necessarily credentialed in any way above and beyond the average user.”

For someone like me, who constantly uses Wikipedia for fact-finding and confirmation of truth in many areas, this is indeed worrisome news.

Gothic tales

Rumour has it that, in 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, aged 19, along with her soon-to-be husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, had travelled to Switzerland to visit Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva.

There, Lord Byron, after having read an anthology of German ghost stories called ‘Fantasmagoriana’, had challenged the Shelleys, as well as his personal physician, John William Polidori, to a contest of writing the scariest tale possible.

Apparently, Percy Bysshe Shelley had conceded defeat right away.

On the other hand, Mary Shelley, after a dream of some sort, had written the story of a Dr Victor Frankenstein who had put together various human body parts and brought to life a monstrous ‘creature’, which had ultimately rebelled against the good doctor and created havoc around the countryside by killing people. This story by Mary Shelley, called ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’, had been first published in 1818 to become the most famous horror story in the world.

Rumour also has it that, at this meeting, Lord Byron himself had begun writing a story about vampire legends he had heard while travelling to the Balkans. Although he could not complete the story, his physician, John William Polidori, taking off from Lord Byron’s work, had written his own vampire legend, called ‘The Vampyre’, and had it published in 1819.

In so doing, both Mary Shelley and John William Polidori had become two of the early contributors of Gothic fiction.

[Citation: wikipedia]

Frankenstein

In some of my previous posts, I’ve written about how the amount of technology in our lives is a matter of concern and anxiety. How, from emails to artificial life, technology has encroached upon our lives in an alarming manner. However, I believe, this anxiety is really a Western phenomenon and is yet to trouble us in the East.

Although the second test-tube baby in the world was created by an Indian doctor, Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay, in Calcutta in 1978, the baby named Durga after a Hindu goddess (she is known as Kanupriya Agarwal), Eastern cultures have more or less remained unperturbed by this technophobia of the West.

Of course, I must confess, the technology behind the test-tube baby is a Western creation; and, while this creation and the technology (IVF) were celebrated around the world at that time, there was a cry of alarm as well. In fact, for his feat, Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay was ostracised by the Indian as well as the West Bengal government, and later committed suicide in his flat in Calcutta.

The Western world’s fascination with, and alarm about, the creation of life artificially is a historical one. Somehow, there has always been a sense of foreboding attached to this idea. As if the idea automatically comes with a foretelling of doom. The most well-known literary documentation of this type of thinking is represented in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, written just before World War 2, and George Orwell’s ‘1984’, written just after.

But, to my mind, the classic example of this thinking (and documentation) is represented in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ – an early 19th-century English tale of horror, and a Western-world allegory of man’s fascination with creating life artificially… and the foreboding which is built-in in this idea.

Frankenstein’s ‘creature’ (I wonder if Steve Grand chose the name of his computer game ‘Creatures’ from this story) is a composite of human body-parts and is animated by electricity. It’s a momentous event when this creation takes place. But, before the ‘creature’ can be educated about the ways of the world, it runs loose and destroys everything and everyone Frankenstein loves.

It’s a story of the creature taking revenge on its creator. There is the usual celebration of man’s ability to create life artificially, followed by the sense of doom that seems to govern this thought from its earliest days.

Perhaps ‘Frankenstein’ is a cautionary tale, warning man against trying to assume God’s role. Or, perhaps ‘Frankenstein’ is trying to tell us is that, along with the ability to create life, the creator (and his technology) has a responsibility to his creation, as well as to those likely to be affected by it.

Whatever be the moral of the story, Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay certainly paid the price for it.

A-Life

We are fascinated with creation. Not only from the point of view of our origin on this planet or the universe, but also from the process of creating life. The birth of a human child, or any living organism, is simply awe-inspiring. So, it’s no strange wonder that we are also fascinated with the possibility of creating artificial life.

Our efforts in genetic engineering and cloning, although sounding old-fashioned in the context of the cyber world, are still on the fast track. But, so is our effort in creating artificial life of the kind Steve Grand, among others, researches in – and even plays with. (Read my previous post ‘Steve’s grand ambition’.) Steve Grand’s kind of creation is called artificial life, or A-Life.

A-Life deals with creation of new life forms which inhabit synthetic environments in computer programmes. These artificial life forms have their own characteristics, behaviour and intelligence, and they ‘live’ and ‘evolve’ within the synthetic worlds of the computer programmes they inhabit. We can observe and interact with them from our real-life world.

This, of course, is a simplified explanation. The best example of A-Life is Steve Grand’s own computer game ‘Creatures’, which he created somewhere back in the mid-1990s. But, since most of us are unfamiliar with it, perhaps, an easier reference would be the subject of, and the allusion made to, the non-real world in the 1999 film ‘Matrix’ (starring Keanu Reeves) and its sequels.

Similar to the question raised in the film ‘Matrix’, there is a concern – and fear – over the moral and social implications of developing such A-Life technologies. What if these A-Life forms became ‘intelligent’ enough to reproduce themselves and/or take control over the humans who created them? Where would we be then?

The History and Workings of Robotics

“Can a robot be conscious? Can it be not only intelligent, but aware in the way that we are? So far, no artificially intelligent computer has ever shown such signs of life. However, if robots eventually think like us, detect and express emotions, pursue their own interests (whatever those are programmed to be) and even make copies of themselves, it will be increasingly difficult to draw the line between machines and living things.”

This quote is from The Tech Museum of Innovation’s website on Robotics. Specifically speaking, it’s from the ‘living’ page of ‘The History and Workings of Robotics’ chapter. The webpage (from which this quote is chosen) also covers The Turing Test and Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics – must reads for robot or robotics fans.

An online exhibition, ‘The History and Workings of Robotics’ includes sections titled introduction, working, playing, exploring, moving, sensing, thinking and living… all of which make enjoyable reading, even for those who aren’t attracted by technology or robotics all that much.

You can also visit the Robotics homepage on The Tech Museum of Innovation and learn more about the applications of, and apprehensions about, robots and robotics in our lives.

Steve's grand ambition

If machines are able to reason and experience emotions like humans, what would be the difference between the two?

Steve Grand, CEO of Cyberlife Research, which is trying to create forms of synthetic life, says, “People are sometimes fearful that artificial life research will reduce us all to machines and explain away our souls... On the contrary, I believe it will give us a new understanding and a new respect for ourselves, as the most sublime machines in the known universe.” [1]

Come on! Humans as the most sublime machines in the known universe?!! What does this mean? That humans are the ultimate machines? That, out of a desire for a perfect understanding of himself, man is intent on artificially creating the perfect replica of himself in the form of a cyborg or a synthetic man? Is this sheer narcissistic pleasure, or what?

Maybe that explains Western civilisation’s fascination with science fiction over the last 60 years or so (the East is conspicuously blank in this territory). What’s more, some of this thinking may already have fructified into synthetic life forms. For, artificial life (or A-Life) research has a grand ambition. This is what Steve Grand has to say when he is asked about his life ambition (in an interview with www.homecreatures.com):

“To be the first person to create an artificial conscious being and be insulted by it. I’m supposed to say that I want to do this in order to create new kinds of technology that help people. When I’m in business meetings I’m supposed to say that I want to make lots of money for our shareholders and make myself rich. The honest truth, though, is that I want to understand what makes life tick. Life is such an odd concept, and minds are such strange things – I’ve got one of each, and I don’t understand them at all! What more can any of us want than to understand ourselves and each other? My feeling is that the best way to understand life is to create it. Building things is a great way to ensure that you’ve got your ideas straight. Fancy words can hide sloppy reasoning, but a computer will never let you get away with anything.”

To me, the thought ‘should technology be available, machines would become human’ is as fascinating as it is scary. Would these new machines be self-aware like human beings? Would they have morals? Would they be a threat to human life? Would the world be a better place to live in if humans and machines were equal? Would there be any difference between the two when we are all one?

[1 Citation: Steve Grand quote from ‘The Anxiety of Obsolescence, Chapter 2: Machine', by Kathleen Fitzpatrick]

Machines can't think like humans

No matter how much you rave on about technology, machines still can’t think like human beings.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love machines and technology too. From their ability to book flight tickets in an instant to saving friends and family from possible heart attacks to developing safer cars to travel in to providing better news and entertainment… it’s impossible to ignore the benefits of machines and technology in our lives. Some say, machines can be programmed to solve just about anything we have difficulty with.

Well, not yet. When it comes to tasks which come naturally to human beings, like making beds or telling bedtime stories to put children to sleep, machines fall regrettably short. One of the reasons for this may be because machines are not quite sure of themselves when they encounter something unexpected. If the solution is not found within the system – i.e. it is not programmed into it – machines can get stuck (stop functioning or go into a loop) or behave erratically.

In contrast, when humans get stuck with problems, they seek out and find possible alternative approaches, methods and solutions… some of which may involve using another machine or technology or tactic. This versatility, or resourcefulness, of human beings is something machines have not been able to copy. At least, not yet. This is because the resourcefulness of the human mind is not entirely a matter of reason, but a combination of reason and emotion.

Technology is sexy

Do we have an obsession with technology?

From faster cars and computers to mobilephones with more features to Internet connectivity at lightning speeds to washing machines with fuzzy logic to HDTV, space exploration, nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence… man’s endeavour to create a technologically-superior life is an endless enterprise.

What for? Why do we engineer fancier and faster machines? What motivates us to design a life of speed? Why has technology become an all-powerful culture in our lives?

While reviewing Hans van de Braak’s seminal work, ‘The Prometheus Complex: Man’s Obsession with Superior Technology’, in a 1997 issue of Technology and Culture journal, David Rothenberg offers a point of view: “We don’t just do it to get ahead in the material world, we are obsessed, we are seduced, and we use technology to impress and seduce ourselves. Technology is sexy. We always want more.”

Well, what do you think?

A new love affair

For most of us, the relationship between man and machine is not yet a direct wiring in syndrome. Although some of us go to sleep with our mobilephones and our iPods next to our pillows, we do keep a distance from most other electronic devices such as TV sets, computers and microwave ovens. But, you can’t deny the fact that slowly we are becoming willing functionaries of these machines (if they may be called by that old-fashioned term). In fact, for some of us, it’s a new love affair.

I’m not sure if we can describe the man-machine relationship as a ‘physical’ one, but there is a relationship which tends to draw in the man to the machine. When I observe the excitement – and glee – with which I use my computer to do my work, check my emails, surf the Internet, blog, network on orkut, etc., or use my mobilephone to remain connected locally, even internationally, I’m amazed at the dependence my life has on these machines. I confess, the time I spend with these machines is substantial.

It’s true I have no literal interface (i.e. physical wiring in) with these machines, but the dependence – both functional (work-related) and emotional – is tremendous. When these systems are ‘down’, I go crazy, fretting and fuming and cursing everyone likely to be responsible for the downtime. If the downtime persists, or as it is in love, if the machines fail to stick to their commitments, I go through phases of anger and anxiety and depression. How can my life go on without these machines!

Of course, life does go on… with or without machines. When I come to my senses, I chuckle over my anger and anxiety and depression. Surely, machines cannot rule my life. Losing touch with machines cannot be the end of my world.

[Just in case, I better upload this post on my blog before the broadband connection breaks down.]

My connected life

While travelling on work, I need to stay connected with my clients, my business associates and my friends. That’s where technology comes in. My laptop and my mobilephone become essential appendages to my body. Not only do I use these technological devices for their respective tasks, but, when I need to send or receive emails, or surf the Internet, I connect them through a wired interface and simply (to use an old-fashioned term) dial up to the world.

Mind you, at home, I’m no different. While watching TV or listening to music, I’m rather free and submissive with the remote control. Still, I’m a bit of an old fogie. So far, I’ve stayed away from iPods and hands-free attachments to my mobilephone or my music system. That’s because I’m against anything that requires me to plug in wires and things into my body. They make me uncomfortable. God help me if I ever need a pacemaker.

When I think about the omnipresence of technological devices in my life and how some of them have become almost-natural appendages to my body, I find the phenomenon quite incredible. These devices of technology have virtually become extensions of myself. I can’t live without them. This makes me wonder: If these devices of technology have become extensions of myself, have I become more of a machine and alienated myself from my inner being?

Wonder what the Romantics would have said about my connected life.

The Romantic Movement

The Romantic Movement has been described as an artistic and intellectual response to the strict discipline and philosophy of the Enlightenment period. Its character, typically, has been expressed in feelings, sentimentality and unrequited love; not reason, technology, fashion or architecture.

This made me wonder if there would ever have been a Romantic Movement without the Industrial Revolution and all the evils that came with it. I use the word evil not with a satanic connotation, but more loosely to indicate the negative side-effects of progress and prosperity, much of which we are enjoying today.

The Industrial Revolution stood for inventions, technology, industry-building, trade, travel and the growth of cities. It brought to us goods – and even services, like banking – which made life better for us, easier for us, safer for us. Life advanced; a new civilisation was built. Yet, this advance isolated us from nature and the natural world. It took us away from the purity and simplicity of a good and happy life.

Perhaps we, or some of us, felt threatened by this change in our lives – threatened by this loss of connection or attachment with nature. And, perhaps, this loss was grief enough for us to turn to nature and its expression in poetry, literature, music and art. Perhaps, it was this collective grief which really created the Romantic Movement – and not mere feelings, sentimentality and unrequited love which is what is typically attributed to it.

Perhaps, the Romantic Movement was just a response to those values which were lacking in our lives – and in our society – at that period of time. And, perhaps, it was the Romantic Movement which made life more enduring for us.

Falling in love, Minsky-style

“We are equally apt to deceive ourselves, not only in our personal lives but also when dealing with abstract ideas. There, too, we often close our eyes to conflicts and clashes between our beliefs.”
[Marvin Minsky, mathematician and computer scientist, from Chapter 1: ‘Falling in Love’ in his book, ‘The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind’ as quoted on Edge 203.]

We’ve all gone through it, for better or worse, and we all want to know about it. But seldom do we have the time to research or write a treatise on love – or, more accurately, on falling in love – like Marvin Minsky does.

In ‘Falling In Love’, Marvin Minsky very simply asks, what is love, and how does it work? However, in supplying the answer(s), he takes us through a long journey that covers discussions on Infatuation, The Sea of Mental Mysteries, Moods and Emotions, Infant Emotions, Seeing a Mind as a Cloud of Resources, Adult Emotions, Emotion Cascades, and Theories of Feelings, Meanings and Machines… with quotes and diagrams to boot.

Not quite what Shakespeare wrote about, right? But surely, you didn’t expect any explanation on love to be easy? At least, not from someone like Marvin Minsky who compares man to machines as easily as we compare apples and oranges over the breakfast table.

You’d probably like to know what ‘Falling In Love’ is all about yourself. So, without much ado, here’s the Edge 203 link.
[You’ll need to scroll halfway down the page for the article.]

Violence as a commodity

Violence is a deeply-rooted problem in our society. We need solutions to address this problem and, if not wipe it out altogether (which is a noble thought, indeed), at least, mitigate it… so as to protect our loved ones from harm. In the process, if we are able to engender peace and harmony for the community at large, so much the better.

To this effect, I've always believed that films, as a medium, can be used effectively to communicate messages of peace and harmony as they have fantastic powers of influence over us. Yet, when I recall the films I've seen in my life, I'm amazed to count the number of films which contain violence, sometimes as their central idea, providing thrills and entertainment to millions of people around the world. Sadly, I've enjoyed watching many such films… and have accepted violence as a commodity in a package not much different from comedy or romance.

My defence, like everyone else's, of course, is that films provide harmless entertainment. How much damage can films cause in our lives! There's no real proof that violence in films leads to violence in society! After all, it's a few hours of fun and entertainment in the form of a visual narrative, with actors playing the parts. It's a make-believe world. No-one in his or her right mind would take films so seriously.

Then I wondered if I would take the learning and the messages from films like 'Gandhi' or 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' seriously. I wondered if I would consider these films as few hours of entertainment and forget them, if not immediately, then soon after having watched them. It occurred to me then that these films have already had a far-reaching effect in my life… just as they have had, or would have, meanings for millions of people across the world.

In a September 2001 article in The Christian Science Monitor titled, 'Do violent films shape or reflect?' (based on which I've written this post), film critic David Sterritt compared two Hollywood films which I, too, had seen around the same time: 'Three Kings' and 'Rules of Engagement'. On reading this article and recalling the two films, I realised how important it is to separate films with positive messages from the ones carrying messages which are detrimental to our social, cultural and spiritual well-being.

For instance, 'Three Kings' (starring George Clooney, Mark Walberg and Ice Cube) is the story of a trio of cynical American soldiers in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War (the 1991 US-Iraq war). It's an anti-war film that deals with various issues of war, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, governmental power play, the use of media for propaganda, among many others. The film opens up our minds to the evils of war… even when it's over.

'Rules of Engagement' (starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L Jackson) is a tale of an American army officer charged with the wrongful deaths of Yemeni protestors at a rally while saving the US Ambassador in Yemen. The film portrays Arabs as villains - evil terrorists carrying deadly weapons under their robes, intent on killing White Americans as capitalists. Now, if this wasn't a biased representation of Arabs, bordering on racism, then I don't know what the film was about?

What was worse, 'Rules of Engagement' promoted anti-Arab feelings amongst Americans and others around the non-Arab world! Instead of resolving US-Arab conflicts, and promoting peace and harmony, 'Rules of Engagement' was actually escalating it.

I realised that films like 'Gandhi', 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' and 'Three Kings' were great because they discussed and presented complicated issues such as war, violence and racism in an even manner… not only to give us perspectives to these issues, but also to imbibe in us a sense of morality. And, in turn, give us the courage to face and challenge such issues whenever we encountered them in our lives.

I realised that these films were not just a few hours of entertainment, but, actually, potent carriers of social, cultural and political messages designed by thoughtful filmmakers. They did not package violence as a commodity for box-office profits, nor to satisfy the need for thrill within us. They reached out to us and touched our sensibilities.

[Citation: 26 September 2001 article 'Do violent films shape or reflect?' by David Sterritt in The Christian Science Monitor.]

Drawing entertainment value from violence

Films like 'Gandhi' or 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' may propagate virtues of nonviolence and racial tolerance, but I wonder if they make up the right diet for the daily film-going audience across the world. For, it seems to me that, the daily film-going audience is more interested in a diet of action, adventure and thrills… with generous doses of murder and mayhem added for effect. Perhaps, murder and mayhem is really the main course!

Given a choice between 'Gandhi' and 'Kill Bill Vol.1', I'm sure film-viewers would lap up the blood and guts offered by 'Kill Bill' rather than spend two hours trying to understand the historical realism of 'Gandhi'. Or, in a choice between 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' and 'Saving Private Ryan', the war-tale 'Saving Private Ryan' would win over all the court-room battles of 'To Kill A Mocking Bird'. You may not believe me, but the box-office figures are on my side

It's no guesswork, nor impulse, that pushes big film industries like Hollywood or Bollywood to produce films which contain violence. Violence is what the film-viewing audience desires and craves for. Tales of revenge, hatred, war and fear are the most popular themes in films. The more disturbing the violence, the more sensational the film and its reviews… helping to draw in larger and larger audiences.

Films depicting violence are a popular form of entertainment in our culture. And, why not! If films are to portray life, they have every right to portray the uglier side of life, not just the wishy-washy romance which all TV soaps offer. After all, violence is as much a part of our cultural identity as romance is. And, big film industries are quick to draw entertainment value from it.

Creating violence

Why do filmmakers show violence in their films? Is it to create shock for shock’s sake? Or, is it to communicate an important message that violence should be stopped? Or, is it for some other reason altogether? Whatever be the reason, violence in films does get film-viewers to sit up and watch. The greater the shock on screen, the greater the audience impact.

However, that’s not where violence starts, or is created. When there’s a car crash or someone is beaten up by a mob or someone accidentally slips and falls right before our eyes, we stop and look. We hardly ever go to help. But we stop and stare – or perk up to a murder story in the local newspaper or on TV – as long as our interest lasts.

Why do we do this? Well, it seems it’s in human nature to stare at – or listen to – another’s misfortune. It gives us some sort of pleasure. The more gruesome the incident or tale, the greater our interest. A friend of mine had once voiced this aspect of human nature succinctly. According to him, as human beings, we are hardwired to enjoying a tragedy.

Some filmmakers thrive on this human affinity to violence – to watching terrible things happen to our fellow human beings. Murder, rape, serial killings, accidents, bomb blasts, war… you name it, we are drawn to violence as naturally as moths are drawn to fire. With one difference, perhaps: we know when to turn back.

When it comes to violence, our response is not only a physical one, but a mental one as well. That’s where filmmakers stand at an advantage over real-life tragedies. Filmmakers can use script, acting, lights, sounds, music, special colours, graphics and special effects, camera and editing techniques, etc. to heighten the experience of violence.

Thereby, creating their own form of violence in order to win over audiences like us. And, in the process, garner some fame for themselves. But then, where would they be without us?

Can films influence our lives?

The recent film ‘Blood Diamond’ attempts to influence our ethics, our sense of morality, as consumers while selecting a diamond for purchase (see my previous post). Does it stop us from buying diamonds? Certainly not. It only persuades us to choose a legitimate diamond over one that emerges from a conflict zone, such as those from the mines of Sierra Leone where thousands of the poor shed their blood, sweat and tears to search for diamonds which hope to transform their lives.

‘Blood Diamond’ is an example of a new breed of films, like ‘Syriana’ (from Hollywood) and ‘Rang De Basanti’ (from India), which are likely to influence our lives. Going back 25 years, a film like ‘Gandhi’ had done something similar. It not only presented a point of view of one man’s struggle for his country’s independence from British Rule, but also reflected the sentiments of an entire nation against colonialism. Its message of nonviolence has been universal.

Or, going back another 20 years before that, to a film like ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’ which brought to surface the deep-rooted racism and injustice that prevailed in a small town, and in the hearts and minds of the White people, in the United States in the 1930s, and helped usher in a sense of equality for all citizens in that country.

Films like these and many others, and the books and stories that these films mostly originate from, help us understand events, emotions and human predicaments through the ages in various parts of the world, which we have no knowledge of or may never encounter in our lives.

Sometimes films, like fiction, have greater powers of persuasion than actual social or political debates, or protest marches, or strikes, or violent uprisings. After all, they shed no blood. Yet, they use the mechanisms of speech and drama to communicate their messages, to empathise with the experiences of those who lived and/or suffered – whether the films depict real-life people or fictional ones – to influence our minds and bring in changes in our attitudes, emotions and in our lives.

In short, to help us believe that, if we try, we can find solutions to global problems… even to those in our localities and in our families. Yes, I do believe films can influence our lives.

Blood Diamond explains why This Is Africa (TIA)

It’s not everyday that you find a Hollywood film influencing social change. But, with ‘Blood Diamond’, director Edward Zwick may make a difference so global that his film may actually initiate political and economic change across the world. In fact, from the message at the end of the film and from reports in the media, I hear that, although the concept of a ‘blood diamond’ has already tainted the international diamond trade, Zwick’s Hollywood film is likely to carry this disgrace further.

The disgrace is the origin, or source, of blood diamonds: how thousands of the poor in Sierra Leone are forced to mine for diamonds in muddy pits, in the heat and the rain, for less than Rs.4 per day. Many of these diggers (as they are called) succumb to an early death or, as in the 1990s, either killed or get their hands chopped off by the rebels (the Revolutionary United Front – RUF). These poor live on the hope that if they find a diamond, and can take it out of the pits to the nearest buyer (the first point of purchase in a long trade channel), it could transform their lives forever.

At the end of that trade channel is the consumer, the woman, in the upper echelons of society, to whom a diamond is the epitome of love and beauty and glamour… forever. Little does she know that that sparkling little diamond on her ring is the product of blood shed by one, or many more, of the poorest of poor struggling to survive in a small country in Africa. To be fair to her, it’s difficult to know. It’s difficult to separate the blood diamonds (i.e. conflict diamonds) from the diamonds legally mined and traded in the world diamond market. After all, millions of diamonds are traded each year. The diamond industry is a US$60 billion a year business.

What makes the film ‘Blood Diamond’ extraordinary is that it aims to create an awareness of blood diamonds internationally, with the hope of influencing end-consumers into checking the source of the diamonds they purchase, and rejecting a blood diamond in favour of a legal one. This is, indeed, a mighty task since there are millions of diamond consumers across the world, and the World Diamond Council is not going to take all this negative publicity lying down. There is, of course, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (established in 2003) to monitor any abuses that may take place.

However, our film’s story relates to an incident in 1999 (much before the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme came into being), when a Sierra Leonean fisherman, who is forced to become a digger, discovers a large pink diamond in the Kono mines. Perhaps not the incident, but the history certainly checks out… adding authenticity to the film. That, in the 1990s, rebels in Sierra Leone (the RUF), with help from Liberia, financed the blood diamond trade, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, maiming just as many, and creating brigades of child soldiers who were brainwashed into committing atrocities, the seriousness of which they were too innocent to realise.

‘Blood Diamond’, the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio (as a White Rhodesian mercenary diamond smuggler), Djimon Hounsou (as the Sierra Leonean fisherman-digger who finds the large pink diamond and hides it), and Jennifer Connelly (as a journalist pursuing the blood diamond story), brings all of this to the surface in proper Hollywood style, with ample doses of heroism and thrill thrown in… along with love, introspection and some spiritual philosophy… amidst the brutality and the killings. It’s a grand film, over two hours long, highlighting the context of blood diamonds rather smartly. What I found missing in the film – as it was definitely downplayed – was the role of the conniving diamond industry executives who had allowed (and still allows) this to happen.

Perhaps there’s a reason for this. According to a recent Fortune magazine (cover story) on blood diamonds, titled ‘Diamonds Aren’t Forever’, Vivienne Walt in writes, “Diamond producers and dealers did not need Hollywood to reach that conclusion. As war raged in the past decade, they realized that so-called blood diamonds carried a risk to their business that was far out of proportion to the tiny number of stones. Even during the bloodiest years no more than 15 percent of the world’s diamonds were controlled by rebels in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

15 percent still amounts to a large sum in the US$60 billion a year business. So, how effective will ‘Blood Diamond’ be in stirring up a global controversy, persuading consumers to morally evaluate their diamond purchases, bringing about social change, and offering hope to those millions of the poor in Africa who are suffering because of this bloody trade? No-one knows. The real question is, does anyone care? After all, This Is Africa (TIA)… and God left this continent long ago.

Preaching to the converted

In the past week, while writing about film directors Francois Truffaut and Satyajit Ray, I had brought up the matter of films influencing our lives. The question is (or was then): Do they? And, as an extension to that, what relevance do films have in our lives? More importantly, is there a connection between storytelling, truth, art and films? For, like Truffaut, Ray and many others, I, too, have spent weeks on end thinking about these questions.

Fortunately, as I see now, I’ve not been alone. Recently, while surfing the Net, I came across an interview of Indian actor (and Minister of Parliament) Shabana Azmi by Nermeen Shaikh on AsiaSource, going back to October 2002. In the interview, Nermeen Shaikh asks some pertinent questions on whether, and how, films influence our lives… and Shabana Azmi answers them competently, giving examples from her own life.

Here are some excerpts from that interview:

“…if the whole purpose of art is to sensitize people, how can you say that this sensitivity is only going to be directed towards yourself and giving a better performance? This is simply not possible since the best resources of an actor must come from life itself. So when you are in films playing characters struggling with social injustice and exploitation, then a time comes when you can no longer treat your work like a nine-to-five job.”

“I grew up in a family that believed that art should be used as an instrument for social change. Both my parents practiced this principle: my father, through his work as an Urdu poet of great repute, as a film lyricist and also the scriptwriter of films like ‘Garam Hawa’, and my mother as a stage actress in India, who also worked with the Indian People’s Theatre Association.”

“Films have such a strong influence in India but when you try to bring about political or social change through art cinema, you are really preaching to the converted. In mainstream cinema, on the other hand, you have a much wider audience and a large number of issues to cover.”

There’s more, of course. To read the full interview click here.

Blurred vision

“I would like to suggest that the educated audience often uses ‘art’ films in much the same self-indulgent way as the mass audience uses the Hollywood ‘product’, finding wish fulfillment in the form of cheap and easy congratulation on their sensitivities and their liberalism.”
– Pauline Kael, American film critic

It’s not surprising to learn that Satyajit Ray’s films do not find a large audience in India (see my post ‘A Ray of stories… and films’). Indian films, largely represented by the Hindi/Bollywood film industry, have always catered to Indian mass audiences and have been symbols of Indian mass culture since India’s independence.

In the Hindi/Bollywood framework, the film structure, the plot, the acting style, and much of the dialogue are standardised… engaging the audience in a fantasy world of good versus evil, and human melodrama, in fairly clear terms. Complications are sometimes introduced in the form of sub-plots, but they are resolved soon after. As far as film directors and producers go, Hindi/Bollywood films are functional – they satisfy audience needs and make box office cash registers ring.

The ‘art’ film from the independent director, such as Satyajit Ray, presents (and, therefore, represents) an alternative world. A world of films motivated by their richness in terms of aesthetic quality, realism, dialogue, acting, cinematography, editing and music. Most art films weave in a social commentary on the state of our country, on our culture, on human relationships… sometimes, even making a political statement.

As far as Indian audiences go, I would have expected these art films to be relevant and popular. To stand tall on integrity and human values… in a country which badly suffers from these. Yet, these art films are unsuccessful in stimulating Indian audiences. On the contrary, they seem to work in direct opposition to the needs and expectations of the audience… floundering at the box office. The mainstream Indian audience is repelled by art films, preferring their usual commoditised Hindi/Bollywood formula.

In turn, Bollywood happily churns out several hundred films every year in a standardised organised manner as popular entertainment for the masses. Asserting a hypnotic control over them, influencing almost all aspects of their lives, defining the cultural norms that Indians should live by.

I wonder if this Hindi/Bollywood and art film divide is just a matter of our blurred vision… or a representation of something more permanent in our culture.

Conversations with Satyajit Ray

Like me, a lot of avid film-viewers and fans of Satyajit Ray may have wished they had met and spoken to the man Satyajit Ray. Whether you have or haven’t, here are two interviews with Ray which are worth reading:

1. BFI interview by Lindsay Anderson

2. Bright Lights Film interview by Bert Cardullo

A Ray of stories… and films

It’s been said that Satyajit Ray used to believe that if storytelling is wedded to truth, then it is also wedded to art. Although I’m not sure whether Ray actually believed this – or said words to this effect – the connection between storytelling, truth, art and his cinema is inimitable. Through touches of neo-realism (Ray was greatly influenced by Vittorio De Sica), Ray’s films and his stories have always tried to portray the Indian reality, and therefore the truth, through art and film. To my amazement, barring a few occasions, Ray has achieved this magnificently without venturing beyond Bengal and Bengali society.

Like all Bengalis, Ray was greatly influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and had made several films from Tagore’s collection of short stories. Films such as ‘Charulata’ (The Lonely Wife), ‘Teen Kanya’ (Three Daughters) and ‘Ghare-Baire’ (The Home and the World) are prime examples. Ray had adapted stories from many contemporary Bengali writers as well. ‘Pather Panchali’ (Song of the Road) by Bibhutibhushan Badyopadhyay is probably the best known. There were others too: ‘Jalsaghar’ (The Music Room) by Tarashankar Banerjee, ‘Devi’ (The Goddess) by Prabhat Mukherjee, ‘Kapurush’ (The Coward) by Premendra Mitra, ‘Seemabaddha’ (Company Limited) by Manisankar ‘Sankar’ Mukherjee, ‘Pratidwandi’ (The Adversary) by Sunil Gangopadhyay… among others.

A master storyteller himself, Satyajit Ray had written many short stories which he made into films. His own ‘Agantuk’ (The Stranger), ‘Shakha Proshakha” (The Branches of the Tree) and ‘Sonar Kella’ (The Golden Fortress), besides others, make up this collection. In fact, apart from a few films such as ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’ (The Chess Players) and ‘Sadgati’ (Deliverance) both written by Munshi Premchand, and ‘Gonoshatru’ (An Enemy of the People) written by Henrik Ibsen, the stories behind Satyajit Ray’s films were predominantly Bengali, their settings mostly Bengal, earning him the reputation of a Bengali filmmaker, rather than an Indian filmmaker… which is probably what he intended to be.

Yet, Ray’s films were not always popular in Bengal, nor in India. After being rejected by a Bengali and an Indian audience, many of his films were highly successful abroad and received accolades which helped inspire his later films. Many Bengalis criticised Ray for having Western aesthetic values and making films with European rationalism. His admirers were not always Bengali, nor Indian. For instance, when ‘Shakha Proshakha” (The Branches of the Tree) went into trouble during shooting in 1990, it was French actor Gerard Depardieu (an ardent Satyajit Ray fan) who helped complete it.

A bridge between Bengal and the world

Around the time Francois Truffaut was bringing in a wave of change in the world of cinema in Europe, closer home, Satyajit Ray was creating a similar history in India. In the 1950s, India was emerging from the British Rule as an independent nation, trying to build herself politically, economically, socially and culturally. Freedom of expression had taken on a new colour for the people in the new democracy… in continuation of the Independence Movement… and Satyajit Ray gave expression to the new India through the medium of film.

In Bengal, in Eastern India, where Satyajit Ray had been born and educated, the arts had always held a position of paramount importance. Ray was, perhaps, lucky to have been in the midst of its post-colonial development because Bengal is what inspired Satyajit Ray the most. Although gifted in fine arts, music and literature, it was his cinema which brought Ray international distinction. Barring just a few, all of his 29 films were of Bengal, presenting myriad images of Bengal and Bengali culture to the world beyond it. In his own words:

“I created a bridge between Bengal and the world. That’s how I want to be remembered.”

Like Truffaut, Satyajit Ray was also influenced by the French filmmaker Jean Renoir. In fact, Ray had the enviable opportunity to work with Renoir when Renoir had come to India to shoot for his film ‘The River’. However, unlike Truffaut, whose focus always remained on his main characters, Ray gave every element of his film equal importance. Moreover, Ray’s rendering of Indian life – whether he was filming poverty in villages as in his first film ‘Pather Panchali’ (Song of the Little Road), or describing the trials of middle-class city living as in ‘Mahanagar’ (The Big City), or perpetuating a moral tale as in his last film ‘Agantuk’ (The Stranger) – is remarkably sensitive and accurate.

What’s equally remarkable is that Satyajit Ray had achieved this through such simplicity that it’s beyond words. His themes were universal, his scripts meticulously crafted to reduce complexity (Ray wrote his own scripts), and his treatment almost genius-like. He had a way with his actors, particularly children who were central to many of his films. His musicians (Ray had written the scores in many of his films) and technicians knew his mind well, and Ray had completed his films with embarrassingly small budgets and, sometimes, poor equipment. Yet, Satyajit Ray’s films were great accomplishments… leading to many Indian and international awards.

No doubt, Ray’s influence in Bengal, in Bengali cinema and over Bengalis has been tremendous. But, it has been the acceptance and applause of Ray’s films internationally that has built his reputation in India, outside Bengal. Sadly, most Indians haven’t even seen Satyajit Ray’s films.

Truffaut meant something very special

“Truffaut’s passion for cinema, the desire that it stirred in him, animates every movie he ever made, every scene, every shot.”
– Martin Scorsese, in a tribute to Francois Truffaut in Time magazine

The title of this post is not mine. It’s a quote from a Time magazine tribute Martin Scorsese paid to Francois Truffaut. For, Truffaut was no ordinary filmmaker. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Truffaut created the French New Wave in the 1950s that influenced generations and generations of filmmakers across the world. And does so even today.

Truffaut, who, in his 25-odd years in the industry, made as many films before his untimely death at the age of 52 from a brain tumour, began his career as a film critic. Even before that, Truffaut was a film buff (watching hundreds of films every year) and an avid reader (reading a book a week). As a film critic he was thorough, uncompromising and sometimes vicious. He spared no-one, not even his father-in-law who was a film distributor and whose films Truffaut reviewed scathingly. In 1958, Truffaut was banned from the Cannes Film Festival.

American film critic, author and educator, James Monaco, in his 1976 groundbreaking book, ‘The New Wave’, writes that Truffaut’s father-in-law had finally had enough and had taunted him with, “If you know so much, why don’t you make a film?” In 1959, Truffaut returned to Cannes with his own film, ‘Les Quatre Cents Coups’ (The 400 Blows), to take away the Best Director’s award. Thus began his career as one of the world’s best film directors, with masterpieces like ‘Jules et Jim’ (Jules and Jim) and ‘La Nuit américaine’ (Day for Night), giving pleasure to millions of film-viewers and influencing thousands of others.

But, for Truffaut, the going has not been smooth. He has received a great deal of criticism for his films. They’ve been cited as disappointing, private, introverted, complex and even cautious… too serious to be commercial successes. But, undeterred, Truffaut had gone ahead making films, experimenting with techniques, taking cues from those whose influences on him have been unmistakable: Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock.

The human dimension had intrigued Truffaut more than the story. He had always been more interested in his characters than his stories. He had always found ways to focus on his characters, isolating them from the background, punctuating their presence on screen with poignant dialogue. Where a Hindi/Bollywood film filled space with loud music or songs and dances, Truffaut’s films filled space with silence and carefully-crafted words.

But most of all, I think, Francois Truffaut had found filmmaking to be an adventure that gave life and meaning to his thoughts as a film documentarian.

And, what about the question (see my previous post) that had dogged Truffaut most of his life: ‘Is the cinema more important than life?’ Well, according to James Monaco, there may actually be more than one answer:

“It can be answered in the affirmative from two separate perspectives. From the point of view of Truffaut and Léaud [actor who played the main character in Truffaut’s earlier films] the film buffs, the phantoms of the cinémathèque, the answer is obviously – and unhappily – yes. But from the point of view of the media theoretician, the student of the sociological and psychological effects of film, the answer may also be a qualified yes; and this ‘yes’ then becomes the major premise for an important discussion of how the media have altered our existence.”

Is the cinema more important than life?

“This question has tormented me for thirty years: is the cinema more important than life?”
– Francois Truffaut

Cinema plays an important part in the lives of Indians… at least, to those who can afford to see one. Going by some rough facts, globally, India is the largest market for films, which are produced in some 20-odd languages. It is the largest filmmaking nation in the world (close to 900 feature films are released in a year), with annual ticket sales notching up as much as US$2 billion (and expected to grow by 30% in the next 5 years).

To Indians, films are larger than life. The best ones encourage fantasy and escapism. In fact, there’s a premium placed on this, because of which both English (Hollywood) films and Indian art films depicting real life are ignored by the mainstream audience. Cinema is about images and Indian audiences don’t like to be presented images which surround their daily lives of pain and hardship. They like to be overwhelmed… by heroism and humour, music and melodrama, revenge and reunion, sensuality and female submissiveness. In short, Indians like to be presented a world which is unattainable in their real lives. For them, at least for the duration of the film, the film is more important than life.

However, it’s not just the Indian cinema-going audience which is overwhelmed by the cinema. Some, perhaps most, filmmakers are just as enraptured by it as the average Indian cinema-goer. To my mind, Francois Truffaut, French film critic and New Wave film director, is one such filmmaker who had been obsessed with the cinema from an early age. He was an avid film viewer and reviewed many films – sometimes, over-critically – before he began making his own films. His film world was also a world of fantasy and escapism. For, Truffaut, too, had wondered if the cinema was more important than life.

Larger than life

Sanjay Gadhavi’s comment (see my previous post) that Indian audiences identify with larger-than-life characters in his film ‘Dhoom:2’ has a much wider connotation. Albeit, when it comes to Hindi/Bollywood films, and most other films from India, Indian audiences thrive on seeing their heroes larger than life.

On film, Indian heroes are capable of achieving many feats which heroes in films from other countries are incapable of. Mind you, if Indian film heroes were as physically fit as their Chinese counterparts, like Jet Li or Jackie Chan, or if they enacted the roles of Hollywood versions of comic book superheroes like Batman or Spider-Man, I would have no trouble accepting their celluloid achievements. But, when I look at some of the overweight, not-so-physically-fit Indian heroes who are constantly achieving the impossible, and the Indian audience is goading them for more, I wonder what it is all about. Are these feats, to borrow another comment from Sanjay Gadhavi, really “within the realm of reality”?

Indian film heroines, sadly, are not given equal status. Their feats are usually on the dance floor, next to their heroes or along with an entourage, although there have been a few police officer heroines who have done substantial damage to the villains before succumbing, and then being rescued by their heroes. The Indian audience has lapped this up as well, with the female sections of the audience enraptured by the song-and-dance sequences and the glitter of the heroines’ costumes. To the female segment of the Indian audience, life is one big glittering musical show in a Hindi/Bollywood film. As one film director (I think it was Rajeev Menon) who once asked: Take away the song and dance from Indian cinema and what do you have?

Really, what do we have? How does the Indian audience define on-screen reality?

Well, the alternative isn’t very exciting. There’s poverty, pain and death. See any film by Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Govind Nihalani, Prakash Jha, Mrinal Sen, Goutam Ghosh and the rest of the independent brigade, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Life isn’t a bed of roses. On the contrary, it’s steeped with hardship, helplessness and sorrow. And, who in India wants a repetition of that! What Indian audiences want are heroes who can not only protect them from the scum of the earth, but also promise them a few hours of respite through a romance that life really ought to be. Hence, the desire for something much larger than what life really is.

Most Hindi/Bollywood, and other Indian, films fulfil this need in Indian audiences. Leaving me with the question: Is film really larger than life?

The allure of Hindi cinema

To whom is the Hindi/Bollywood film ‘Dhoom:2’ targeted?

I asked this question around Mumbai, indiscriminately, sometimes stopping people in their rush-hour sojourn or upsetting them in their daily stupor. I got the general response “everyone.” Certainly, in my circle of friends, almost everyone had seen it and, going by the film’s Box Office success, I believed it. Yet, when I spoke to a few friends in media and marketing, they informed me that ‘Dhoom:2’ is targeted at the youth. Specifically speaking, they said, it’s targeted at the male urban youth (and aspirant) in the 15-24 years age group.

I guess that explained the big-budget sponsorship ‘Dhoom:2’ received from brands like Coke, Pepe Jeans and Suzuki motorcycles. Besides the usual in-film placements for the brands, there were TV commercials, print and outdoor advertising, posters, ringtones and promos on Coke bottles. Not to mention the film’s two leading stars, Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai, were brand ambassadors for Coke and must have contributed substantially to brand recall.

Pepe, a much smaller brand compared to Coke, did something innovative. It launched ‘D:2 Collection’ – a line of jeanswear especially for the film – which was supported by an elaborate media campaign and appropriately merchandised in retail stores that stocked the D:2 Collection (although I still haven’t noticed it much). All this, besides signing up as the sole merchandising brand partner for all fashion apparels and accessories for ‘Dhoom:2’.

Suzuki motorcycles, on the other hand, showcased three of its super-bikes (a 1000 cc and two 600 cc models) and its advanced technology. Going by the male urban youth target segment, I would have expected a computer game as well, but this was noticeably missing.

But, what about the female audience, or the non-urban audience, or those who aren’t any longer in their youth, who watched ‘Dhoom:2’ by the millions in packed cinema halls and multiplexes? How does anyone explain that? If the film has as much appeal to other audience segments as it does for the male urban youth, then perhaps my friends in media and marketing are wrong. Maybe ‘Dhoom:2’ has a more universal appeal than any old brand tailored for a niche market. Maybe the emotions a film like ‘Dhoom:2’ exudes are not the sole preserve of male urban youths, but many others.

In a recent article, ‘Gadhavi on why Dhoom 2 is a cult film’, in the entertainment section of www.oneindia.in, one of India’s leading portals, Sanjay Gadhavi, director of ‘Dhoom:2’, makes several interesting comments on his film and its audience. Here are some excerpts from that article:

“As far as Dhoom 2 goes, it’s too early to say if it’s a cult film, but it is a very clever sequel. Dhoom 2 is a universal hit; its appeal is not restricted just to the young males.

Dhoom 2 has become a family-going experience. For Dhoom, my producer Aditya Chopra had told me that the target audience was the age group 16 to 25; but for Dhoom 2 it was everybody because everyone had gone to see Dhoom.

If I were to analyse what the 16 to 25 group want, I would put my finger on speed, an adrenaline rush, cool behaviour and the idea of living on the edge. In clothes, it’s short skirts, bikinis. In accessories, it’s accessories, tattoos and all that stuff. But the two Dhooms appealed to all age groups because they are typical Hindi film packaged in a distinct new way. If you notice, both in Dhoom and Dhoom 2, there are no peripheral characters and all the major characters are in their 20s. My films don’t have a mother, father or sister ... and the audience is not disappointed because I have prepared the viewer for what he should not be looking for in the film.

So, while I did incorporate characters who were young and ideas which were new, I was confident that their appeal would cross all age barriers.”

Maybe, simply, the allure of a Hindi/Bollywood film like ‘Dhoom:2’ is such that, no matter how you classify it, it will always find its audience. And, in India, there’s no dearth of it. Perhaps, that’s the allure of Hindi cinema.

Extraordinary Dhoom:2

Storytelling. Truth. Art. And the cinema. It’s not easy to bring all these elements together, but great filmmakers know how to achieve this extraordinary feat. I believe ‘Kabul Express’ and ‘Babel’ (see my previous posts) have the semblance of such extraordinary-ness. But, tragically, they have very few viewers. I say ‘tragically’ because these two important films of 2007 are likely to be ignored by the world in which they are trying to bring in some meaning.

Risking criticism from those millions of film-viewers (which, sadly, included me), and critics too, who’ve helped a utterly meaningless film like ‘Dhoom:2’ achieve Box Office success, I wish to put on record that ‘Dhoom:2’ from India’s Bollywood possesses none of the greatness of a great film. Storytelling, truth, art and the cinema do not feature in ‘Dhoom:2’. They are noticeably absent. Yet, the film has achieved what many films haven’t: extraordinary Box Office success.

‘Dhoom:2’ has three heroes: One, a senior police officer (with an expecting wife at home who is always talking to her husband in Bengali, although he never responds to her in Bengali… which made me wonder why it was included in the film), always fully clothed and not too hot on the dance floor, but intent on chasing an international crook. Two, an international crook of Indian origin (we’ve gone global now), who, apart from being a master of disguise, loves to take off his shirt and show off his rippling muscles, and is capable of fantastic acrobatic feats… including great dancing. Three, a simpleton and somewhat imbecilic police officer, die-hard partner to our first hero, who brings in the comic relief we expect in a typical Hindi/Bollywood film.

‘Dhoom:2’ has three heroines (or is it really two?): One, a fabulously sexy senior police officer, who remains fully clothed throughout her short role in the film, is really hot with a handgun, and is chasing our second hero, the international crook. During a chase she breaks a leg and her role is aborted. Two, a fabulously sexy crook who, apart from being a great dancer and sometimes shedding her clothes just for a little attention, is really the bait for the international crook set up by our first hero, the police officer. However, she brings in a twist in the tale by falling for the international crook, our second hero. Three, an absolutely dim-witted, non-Hindi speaking, scantily-clothed and fabulously sexy sister of our first heroine (our fabulously sexy police officer in a double-role), who is doing something or the other on the beaches of Copacabana, Brazil, which has nothing to do with the film except provide a home for our two police officers who are hot on the heels of the international crook whose next big heist is planned in Copacabana.

The first two heroes meet, seemingly coincidentally, sizing each other up and suggesting that, under different circumstances, they could have been friends as they are really the same kind of people. Well, circumstances are different, and so ‘Dhoom:2’ turns out to be a cat-and-mouse game of a Hindi/Bollywood action-thriller with great-looking actors but little acting, bad songs but great dancing, intermittent comic relief from our third hero, and an unexpected love scene towards the end of the film (the only thing I enjoyed as it was well-executed)… all leading to a finale which is, predictably, a touch reminiscent of the earlier ‘Dhoom’ film.

Storytelling, truth, art and the cinema? ‘Dhoom:2’ is not about any of these things. But surely, you can’t expect such filmmaking from a Hindi/Bollywood Box Office superhit! That would indeed be extraordinary.

Babel: what's the connection?

In the beginning, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film ‘Babel’ is disconnected and confusing. There are four stories: two in Morocco, one crisscrossing the US-Mexico border, one in Japan. Each story reveals characters living in their own self-contained world; cocooned, isolated lives which are suddenly thrown open to the world and the film-viewer by accident. Slowly, the walls that separate the characters and their stories from the outside world collapse, and the stories begin to converge.

It all starts with a rifle shot. Two Moroccan boys, while playing with their goatherd father’s rifle on a mountain top (the rifle was bought to kill jackals which preyed on the goats), shoots at a passing tourist bus and accidentally hits an American woman passenger. This sets off an international incident with the media blowing up the story as an act of terrorism, while the critically-injured passenger’s husband tends to his wife by taking refuge in a Moroccan village.

The American couple in the middle of this controversy in Morocco, i.e. the injured passenger and her husband, has a story of their own. They are on a holiday to reconnect with themselves, to put their marriage back on track, after the recent death of their baby. But things don’t go so well for them. They’ve left their two older children (a girl and a boy) back home in San Diego with their Mexican nanny, and are concerned.

The Mexican nanny has plans of going to her son’s wedding in Mexico. She is trusted by her employers, but when she learns that her employers are unable to return home on time (because of the shooting accident in Morocco), and failing to make alternative arrangements to look after the two children, she decides to take the children with her to her son’s wedding in Mexico. All goes well till she is about to cross the border back into the United States in her drunken nephew’s car. She is stopped at the border check-post and when her drunken nephew makes a run for it in the car, her world falls apart.

In Japan, a deaf-mute teenage girl is fighting against the whole world to be accepted as normal. She has lost her mother recently (suicide) and feels her father is not caring enough. Feeling affronted and unloved, she mixes up her emotions – anger with her coming-of-age sexual desires – and indulges in brazen acts of promiscuity. The girl’s isolation – the barrier between her inner ‘silent’ world and the world outside – is beautifully portrayed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Even though this fourth story in Japan has very little connection with the other three (won’t tell you what the connection is; see the film and find out), and therefore, the main film, it is the one I loved the most. It’s in this story that Alejandro González Iñárritu magically, and sharply, brings out the pain of being isolated, of being disconnected with the world.

Naturally, communication, or the lack of it, is central to ‘Babel’. Apart from language being a barrier, particularly when people of two countries or cultures interact, all the characters in the stories seem to have problems expressing themselves, and being misunderstood, adding to their disconnectedness and isolation from the world. But, there’s more. Right from the first rifle shot, there’s a sense of destiny taking control of the lives of the characters in the stories… and helplessness setting in.

In ‘Babel, all four stories converge slowly over two days, and over two hours for the film-viewer, making watching the film rather laborious. Moreover, with sudden cuts between the stories, I felt annoyed. The moment I settled into a plot, González Iñárritu transported me to another one, leaving me hanging. Perhaps, González Iñárritu adopted this technique to string together the fragmented stories and bring about their interconnectedness; but I’m only guessing.

There is one thing, however, that González Iñárritu succeeds in communicating through ‘Babel’. That, human isolation and interconnectedness are really two sides of the same coin called life. Therein lies their connection. ‘Babel’ is worth watching, if only for this realisation.

Kabul Express: no song and dance

The coming of the New Year was a somewhat poignant moment for me. It slipped quietly over two days without a song and dance, leaving behind a vision of how isolated yet interconnected we are as human beings. No, it wasn’t a personal tragedy, nor loneliness, that brought this enlightenment in the form of a paradox. On the contrary, it was entertainment.

Specifically speaking, two films opened my eyes. The first was, strangely, a Hindi film called ‘Kabul Express’. I say ‘strangely’ because I’m rather critical of Hindi/Bollywood films, as I am unable to accept their meaningless song-and-dance routines and open shameless plagiarism. But ‘Kabul Express’ was no ordinary Hindi film. The second was an international film called ‘Babel’ – a tribute (if that’s the right word) to this paradox of human isolation and interconnectedness I mentioned earlier.

‘Kabul Express’ is an intelligent film. Its intelligence lies in its treatment and presentation of human nature and world politics through a simple plot: Two television journalists (both men) from India visit post-9/11 war-torn Afghanistan in an attempt to do a story on the Taliban. Their Afghan guide takes them through the desolate Afghan countryside (beautifully captured on film) in his jeep in order to trace the Taliban, who are still purported to be operating in Afghanistan, and interview them. They meet an American journalist (a woman) there who is still looking for ‘one great story’ to advance her career.

For the Indian journalists and their Afghan guide, their meeting with the Taliban is unexpected. They are captured by a fleeing Taliban member who holds them hostage, engineering a journey to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border so he can escape/return to Pakistan. ‘Kabul Express’ is about two days that these five characters – two Indian journalists, an Afghan guide, a Taliban (terrorist) and an American journalist – spend together and the emotions that run within them, leading to the end of the film.

In ‘Kabul Express’, the war and the politics happen in the background; yet, they are very much a part of the film. The film is universal in its theme and it’s a remarkable achievement by documentary filmmaker Kabir Khan. It has no songs, nor dance sequences. It has no melodrama, nor action. In fact, the acting is quite subdued… with touches of humour and strong human emotion.

‘Kabul Express’ presents a facet of human nature that always amazes me. And that is, how we, humans, isolate ourselves through our ideologies and our ambitions, sometimes taking it to an extreme end, before realising that, underneath, we are all one. That, the ground beneath our feet is the same, no matter what our beliefs are, no matter which culture we belong to, no matter what language we speak.

‘Kabul Express’ is a very unlike Hindi/Bollywood film, but one of the best I’ve seen.

2007

"Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune – I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them. "

[Walt Whitman, from Song of the Open Road, from ‘Leaves of Grass’]