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’]

Guided imagery

“The term ‘guided imagery’ refers to a number of different techniques, including visualization; direct suggestion using imagery, metaphor and storytelling; fantasy and game playing; dream interpretation; drawing; and active imagination.

Therapeutic guided imagery is believed to allow patients to enter a relaxed state and focus attention on images associated with issues they are confronting… Guided imagery is a meditative relaxation technique sometimes used with biofeedback.”
[from 'Natural Standard', an organization that produces scientifically based reviews of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) topics.]

Imagery is the most fundamental language we have. Everything we do is processed in the mind through images.

For the past hundred years, many renowned Western psychologists have worked with imagery (dreams, daydreams and fantasies), some of whom have even postulated their own psychoanalytic techniques. Besides Wolfgang Kretschmer (whom I mentioned in my previous post), Robert Desoille’s ‘guided daydreams’, Jacob Morena’s ‘psychodrama’, and Hans Carl Leuner’s ‘experimentally introduced cathathymic imagery’ have all contributed to using imagery in therapy. Hans Carl Leuner had further developed psychodrama, calling it symboldrama psychotherapy or guided affective imagery.

However, according to Joe Utay, Assistant Professor, Counselor Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Director of Counseling and Evaluation Services, Total Learning Centers, in a March 2006 article in Journal of Instructional Psychology, it is David Bresler’s and Martin Rossman’s work with guided imagery which is better known today. Bresler and Rossman co-founded the Academy for Guided Imagery and defined guided imagery as a “range of techniques from simple visualization and direct imagery-based suggestion through metaphor and storytelling.”

There are many others, of course, who have worked with guided imagery. In fact, there is no end to the amount of research that’s going on today in this field. In the same informative March 2006 article from Journal of Instructional Psychology, Professor Utay explains, “Guided imagery can be used to learn and rehearse skills, more effectively problem solve through visualizing possible outcomes of different alternatives, and increase creativity and imagination. It has also been shown to affect physiological processes… in addition to its use in counseling, guided imagery has also been used with very positive results in sports training, rehabilitative medicine, and healthcare.”

Although its applications are manifold, guided imagery is considered a part of alternative therapy/medicine and yet to be embraced by the mainstream medical fraternity. As the Natural Standard website says, “…research is early and is not definitive.”

To read the article on Guided Imagery by Professor Joe Utay and Megan Miller from the March 2006 issue of Journal of Instructional Psychology, click here.

To visit the Natural Standard website, click here.

To visit the Academy for Guided Imagery website, click here.

Thinking in the form of a movie

Dreams, daydreams and fantasies are overlooked for all the good they do – or can do – for us. On the contrary, we scold people for frittering away time daydreaming or fantasising about things which are unreal and may not happen. In everyday life, dreams and daydreams have no substance. It’s foolish to spend time in such activities.

Yet, in older traditions and cultures, such as those of ancient Hindus, Chinese and Tibetans, or Native (American) Indians, dreams, daydreams and fantasies played an important part in forming imagery and imagination. They were essential in the formation of the concept of ‘I am’ and, therefore, essential to life.

Moreover, people believed that dreams, daydreams and fantasies could be used effectively for relaxation and healing, for solving problems, and for guiding the progress of their tribes. These people went to the extent of using hypnosis or hallucinogens (mind-altering drugs), such as opium, datura or peyote, to induce daydreams and fantasies… using symbols for meaning.

In the West, perhaps thanks to Descartes, imagination didn’t fit into the nature of rational thinking, and was considered ‘unreal’. It was with the advent of psychology in Europe and, particularly, Sigmund Freud’s declaration that dreams, daydreams and fantasies can help unravel a great deal about a person’s mind, that the use of dreams, daydreams and fantasies became popular as a psychoanalytical tool.

Besides Freud, many psychologists began working with dreams, daydreams and fantasies. Among them Carl G Jung, Roberto Assagioli, Carl Happich, Hans Carl Leuner, Wolfgang Kretschmer and Robert Desoille… who started using daydream and meditation in therapy, introducing the Eastern concept of ‘I am’ in their psychoanalysis.

It was Kretschmer who referred to daydreams as inner visions, or ‘thinking in the form of a movie’.

Dream world

Is our dream world a new world we have created, as a writer or a filmmaker does with his/her narrative? Or, is it a pre-existing world which we have only just discovered? Is our dream world in the present, or in the future/past?

When we dream, our dream world seems real. While we dream, we have no cognition of our waking world – the actual reality, the phenomenal world where we physically exist – until we attain, or return to, the waking state and become conscious of our surroundings in the real world. Then, we become aware that we had been dreaming.

Yet, in the dream world, we are aware of ourselves and our surroundings. We are able to see, speak, smell, hear, move about, and do things as if everything was real. It’s as if we existed in a parallel world of our own. And, when we wake up, we are unable to enter this same dream world again. At least, willingly.

Only the experience remains.

Doubles

There’s no doubt that we find it difficult to identify ourselves with the reality-and-fantasy sequences that many authors and filmmakers present to us in their narratives. Yet, psychologists say, we all live our lives in similar fashion.

Whenever we are unable to cope with reality, when the events in our lives are too tough to handle, we escape into fantasies, daydreams and wishful thinking. We continuously engage in a process of self-creation and self-discovery, constructing autobiographical narratives. We create fictional worlds in our minds where our problems are sorted out and resolved, providing a much-needed relief.

In these constructed narratives, we transform ourselves into fiction and become extensions of our individual selves, in the same way many authors and filmmakers present their characters in their narratives. We create alternate versions of ourselves, ‘doubles’ you might say, who play different roles in different events… although, in reality, our lives may never change. These ‘doubles’ have the ability to escape from the reality and have the freedom to change anything, living a life of unlimited possibilities.

We stretch the time at our disposal, living out not only one or two events from our lives, but, sometimes, our entire lives. We see our lives being lived differently… fulfilling our desires, resolving issues which are too horrible for us in our real everyday lives. And, should the reality we face everyday not change for us in accordance with our desires, we live and re-live these fantasies for years together.

Our real lives and our fantasy lives are interwoven, though we may never reveal this to the outside world. For, expressing such fictional worlds in print or on celluloid is unthinkable! No wonder, whenever we read about or see a display of such narrative, we feel a discomfort which we are unable to explain.

Fragmented narrative, factual resemblance

The trouble with films like David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ or Aparna Sen’s ‘15 Park Avenue’ is that, while the director is having so much fun with his/her film, the viewer feels left out… isolated. The continuous interplay of fantasy and reality is just too much for the viewer to keep track of… and results in the confusion I experienced and mentioned in my previous posts.

The viewer is unable to identify with what’s going on around or in front of him/her, as there’s a shift in the reality created by the director, as well as the characters, in the film. This confusion in the viewer’s mind turns into distaste and, later, into revulsion. Perhaps, that’s what director Aparna Sen tried to convey through the peripheral characters – the schizophrenic protagonist’s family and friends – in her film ‘15 Park Avenue’.

Maybe, the message in a fragmented narrative is stronger than what is intended by the director of a film or the author of a book using this technique: that, the fragmented narrative bears a much stronger factual resemblance to our lives than what we may, or are willing to, accept.

15 Park Avenue: fragmented narrative

The fictional landscape in a fragmented narrative has been an experiment with post-modern writers and filmmakers for many years. The European school with writers like Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, as well as filmmakers like Jacques Rivette of the French New Wave and, later, David Lynch from the US, are all masters of this narrative technique.

In the fragmented narrative, mastering the interplay between reality and dream, weaving the plot around the characters, is not an easy task and requires a special virtuosity. Since the presentation of the fictional landscape is a subjective one, often directly connected to the mind of the characters in the story/film, many of the stories/scripts deal with situations where the characters themselves create the fictional landscape. David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ (see my previous post) is a perfect example of this where the plot shifts seamlessly between dream and reality.

In India, earlier this year, filmmaker Aparna Sen had used this technique in her film ‘15 Park Avenue’ – an exploration of schizophrenia in a young woman. I found the film quite insightful (and informative) as it dealt not only with a schizophrenic person, with the usual interplay of dream and reality happening all around her, but the film also presented the emotions and reactions of the onlookers – the schizophrenic person’s family and friends – which was another version of the reality. The question, of which version is the reality and which version is the dream, was masterfully handled by Aparna Sen… right till the end.

Of course, some confusion remains.

Mulholland Drive: narrative in a subjective landscape

There have been moments in life when I’ve been confused, but very few would come close to my confusion during, and after, watching David Lynch’s film ‘Mulholland Drive’. That must have been sometime in 2002 and, honestly, I’m still trying to piece the film/story together… trying to make sense out of my confusion.

‘Mulholland Drive’ is about two beautiful women – Diane and Camilla – both actresses in Hollywood. Or, correctly speaking, the film is about Diane (played by Naomi Watts), trying to make it as an actress, but failing; and about Camilla (played by Laura Elena Harring), succeeding. The entire film seems to be a fantasy, a dream, played in Diane’s mind… which is where the confusion thrives.

Diane (as small-town girl Betty) comes to Hollywood with hopes of becoming an actress. While staying alone at her aunt’s apartment, Diane finds a glamorous but traumatised amnesiac woman, Rita (who is actually Camilla, but since Camilla can’t remember anything, she adopts the name Rita from a Rita Hayworth poster), hiding in the apartment. Diane (i.e. Betty) helps amnesiac Camilla (i.e. Rita) slowly discover her (i.e. Rita’s) true identity and, in the process, the two women become lovers.

Diane’s acting career fails miserably, while Camilla’s succeeds superlatively. Camilla becomes a glamorous celebrity, leaving Diane for another lesbian lover. Unable to take the pain of her failures (in career and in love) and overwhelmed by jealousy, Diane hires a hitman to kill Camilla. Then Diane commits suicide. Camilla escapes the attempt on her life, but the incident turns her into a traumatised amnesiac. Camilla wanders aimlessly for a while before taking refuge in a Hollywood apartment, where she is found by Diane (i.e. Betty).

Got all that? There’s more, of course, but for simplicity, I won’t go into it.

What’s fascinating about ‘Mulholland Drive’ is that director David Lynch has been able to take the normal path of narrative, with its objective reality, and turn it upside down into a subjective landscape. The landscape in the film is a fantasy in Diane’s mind. That is, it’s a view of one of the characters in the film – and that too, it’s a fantasy in a troubled mind. A mind which itself is trying to escape from the reality it cannot cope with. It’s fiction (e.g. Betty being dreamed up by Diane) within fiction (e.g. Diane struggling with her failed acting career and resorting to fantasy), creating a totally subjective landscape.

In ‘Mulholland Drive’, David Lynch presents reality in fragments of fantasies that his characters dream up while trying to cope with the reality of their lives. The film viewer has trouble identifying with this. If the characters in the film are unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality, how can the film viewer?

Hybrids of truth and fiction

Telling the truth about the self, constituting the self as complete subject… it is a fantasy. In spite of the fact that autobiography is impossible, this in no way prevents it from existing.
– Philippe Lejeune, ‘On Autobiography’

We look for meaning in life – to explain life to ourselves. For some of us, that’s not enough. We need to share our experiences, our interpretations of life, with others. We need to speak of our joys, our sorrows and the lessons we’ve learnt, warning others of the pitfalls, passing on personal philosophies as wisdom.

But, are these accurate reflections of our lives? Or, are they pseudo-realities constructed by us to suit our notions of our identities and personalities – i.e. the identities and personalities we wish to present/project to others? And in doing so, do we not create fictional landscapes within which we exist… and, perhaps, even seduce others to join us there?

Autobiographies, memoirs, personal stories and even interviews are such fictional landscapes, simulations of our lives, where truth and fiction co-exist naturally… happily. For, when these landscapes are crafted well, it is impossible to distinguish truth from fiction, fiction from truth.

In such situations, autobiographies, memoirs, personal stories and interviews, all become hybrids of truth and fiction. In them, we are no longer ourselves, but appear as characters like any other.

Of course, the authorship of the narrative still remains with us.

What are we without our stories?

“It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’, and that this narrative is us, our identities.”
– Oliver Sacks, neurologist, author

Alfred Hitchcock is not only famous for his thrillers, the suspense and murder-mystery tales which are almost a film genre by themselves, but also for making mysterious appearances in his films. Clive Cussler, one of my favourite authors of adventure novels and creator of the hero Dirk Pitt, has an old-man character called ‘Clive Cussler’ making unexpected appearances in Clive Cussler’s (the author’s) novels.

Apart from the comic relief this brings in, I find this act of being a part of one’s own creation a fascinating subject. I mean, this is no autobiography, nor a self-portrait by a painter. A filmmaker and a writer are surreptitiously including themselves as characters in their fictional constructions. Are they doing this for fun? Are they trying to construct new identities for themselves? Are they trying to tell us that their narratives are not all fiction?

This had me thinking in a bit of (self-)inventive mood. Are we not all stories by ourselves? I mean, when we write our resumés for a job application or introduce ourselves at a dinner party or write a short profile on Blogger, are we not constructing stories of ourselves to create an impact or produce a desired result… much the same way a filmmaker or a writer would do during their creative process? And if this be true, are we not all individual stories of some kind?

On ‘A Writer’s Diary’

“At the best and even unexpurgated, diaries give a distorted or one-sided portrait of the writer, because, as Virginia Woolf herself remarks somewhere in these diaries, one gets into the habit of recording one particular kind of mood – irritation or misery, say – and of not writing one’s diary when one is feeling the opposite. The portrait is therefore from the start unbalanced, and, if someone then deliberately removes another characteristic, it may well become a mere caricature.”

(Leonard Woolf, in the preface of his wife Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Writer’s Diary’ which was published 12 years after her death. ‘A Writer’s Diary’ contains edited excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s diary manuscripts.)

Double roles

Why would we want to write our autobiographies? Isn’t there enough reading material in this world, both fiction and non-fiction, to entertain readers? And, how do we know that our autobiographies will entertain others? What do we really know about the reading habits of billions of readers that inherit this Earth? Why would any of them ever be interested in our life stories?

If it isn’t to entertain others, then would it be simply to tell our tales? Would it be to chronicle our lives, our experiences, and our learning in order to assert ourselves on this planet as individuals with distinct egos which need to be fuelled? If this be true, then isn’t writing an autobiography nothing more than a matter of conceit?

Or, is it to discover ourselves, to give social context to our individual experiences, to understand our relationship with the world around us in a self-investigative mode? In which case, isn’t writing an autobiography nothing more than empowering our pens – or our keyboards – into asking questions about ourselves, about our lives, which we are too afraid to ask aloud in the real world we inhabit?

If this be true, then are we not re-making ourselves as bolder, more assertive characters in our autobiographies than we really are? And, in the process, are we not creating fictional characters and telling their tales which are truthfully not ours?

As we write our autobiographies, are we not playing double roles?

How much of an autobiography should we believe?

Told in the first person, an autobiography is supposed to be a testimonial of the person writing the autobiography. The first-person voice makes the storytelling more compelling, more believable, more real. The autobiographer, as the storyteller, sucks us, the reader, into the story, making us believe that the reality of the autobiographer is the real world. Almost as if forcing us to recognise and accept the autobiographer’s view of the world as our own reality.

This technique is used by fiction writers too. As readers of fiction, we often escape into the fiction-writer’s world, seamlessly, believing the storytelling, the setting, the characters, etc. to be true… at least, for that moment. It’s like experiencing a reverie. However, we come out of this reverie, if not immediately upon closing the book, at least sometime soon afterward. We realise this is not the real world, but a fictional tale told by a person providing us a few hours’, or a few days’, entertainment.

Of course, we go through our emotions, feeling happy or sad or angry or despair, in agreement with, or in response to, the writer’s treatment of the story and the experiences of the characters in the story. Later, we applaud or challenge or criticise the fiction-writer’s work, reviewing his/her skills as a storyteller, either in absolute terms or in comparison with other works of fiction. But, all through the experience of reading and discussing the work, never do we forget that it is a work of fiction. Anything can happen here. Reality can take its own shape.

But, an autobiography must speak the truth. People, places, dates, events, sequence of events, conversations cannot change to make the storytelling more entertaining, more compelling. The autobiographer is bound by these elements. However, the autobiographer may play with the style of presenting these elements and these facts, and add to them his own inner experiences and emotions as flavours. This basically means, the autobiographer cannot make up or fictionalise the narrative according to his/her whims.

Autobiographers rarely ever write their narratives on the spot. They write later, remembering, introspecting, relying on their memories. This is a tricky affair as memories are known to fail. Of course, autobiographers consult various notes, journals and documents before actually constructing their stories, but can these documents be 100% reliable? The emotions experienced instantly, the nuances of the moment are likely to be missing.

Moreover, autobiographers may be, like all human beings are, prone to talking too much about themselves, exaggerating their life stories, self-justifying their actions, presenting their opinions as facts… turning their autobiographies into works of fiction. If the only reliable source of facts in an autobiography is the autobiographer himself/herself, how can the reader, not having first-hand knowledge, verify all the facts of an autobiography? If all this be true, how much of an autobiography should we really believe?

A grief observed

In ‘A Grief Observed’, C S Lewis wrote about his bereavement when his wife, Joy, died from bone cancer. Yet, he wrote the book, an autobiography, under a pseudonym, N W Clerk, hiding his authorship from the public and referring to his wife as ‘H’ (her first name was Helen). Perhaps, he wanted to keep his grief private and, yet, use his writing as a therapeutic tool to come to terms with it.

We may never know the truth behind his wish to remain anonymous when ‘A Grief Observed’ was first published. However, what we do know is that Lewis later decided to make his authorship public, apparently, upon receiving advice from friends. And, hence, we now have with us a wonderful autobiography… a look inside a man and his loss.

This thought, of this act of writing a personal narrative of one’s grief, while toying with the idea of remaining anonymous, made me wonder if Lewis’ ‘A Grief Observed’ is indeed an autobiography. I mean, if it is a 100% autobiography in first person… and not a semi-fictionalised account of C S Lewis’ life and his bereavement.

Mind you, I’m not accusing C S Lewis of deceit; nor am I suggest anything derogatory. I’m merely wondering if Lewis wrote down exactly what he felt about his grief… as it ought to be in an autobiography. Or, did he come out of himself and, as if he were an observer observing someone else’ grief, write down what he thought C S Lewis would have felt at that moment?

Would C S Lewis have sacrificed some of his real feelings in order to write a book? And, if that were so, wouldn’t ‘A Grief Observed’ contain some fiction?

A late love affair for Lewis

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine’. But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. “In the image of God created He them.” Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.
- C S Lewis, ‘A Grief Observed’

C S Lewis married Joy Davidman: first a civil marriage in a registry office (1955), and a year later, formally, by a clergyman at her bedside. Joy was suffering from bone cancer and was bedridden. Lewis was 57 at the time (a confirmed bachelor until then) and Joy 40. Apparently, C S Lewis and Joy Davidman Gresham had known each other since 1952 when she had visited him in Oxford. Joy, an American writer, separated from her husband (William Gresham) and with two sons, moved to England and later divorced her husband to marry Lewis.

Joy died in 1960. Lewis died in 1963. In ‘A Grief Observed’, C S Lewis records his experience of bereavement at his wife’s death. The book was published in 1961.

C S Lewis and materialism

In a materialistic world, does God exist?

“Modern society continues to operate largely on the materialistic premises of such thinkers as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud,” wrote John G Guest Jr in an article tilted ‘C S Lewis and Materialism’ which appeared in the Nov-Dec 1996 issue of Religion and Liberty from Acton Institute. Prof Guest went on to say, “Yet few today feel at home in the materialist universe where God does not exist, where ideas do not matter, and where every human behavior is reduced to non-rational causes.”

I cannot agree with Prof Guest’s statements simply because I do not believe that a materialistic world and God are mutually exclusive concepts. If materialism is a way of understanding reality, then God certainly features there somewhere… along with thoughts and emotions of people. For, if our world is viewed as a process – where change and transformation are critical to its being – God, religion and spirituality has as much a place in it as nature, science, history and politics.

What’s good about Prof Guest’s article is his presentation of British author C S Lewis’ perspective on materialism. C S Lewis, popularly known for his children’s tales ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ (recently made more popular by Hollywood as a film grossing close to US$1 billion), was an atheist from his adolescence until he turned to religion (theism) at age 31, and to Christianity a couple of years later. Upon his conversion, Lewis wrote avidly, even becoming a popular broadcaster on BBC, submitting his views in favour of Christianity, and refuting many of the assumptions and views against Christianity prevalent at that time (i.e. mid-19th century to mid-20th century).

According to Prof Guest, Lewis debunked materialism on issues such as reason and truth, morality, personal responsibility, and utopianism. He mentions that C S Lewis tried to put together a new natural philosophy that understood human beings as they were… with thoughts and emotions… and not explain them away as tiny parts that add up together to make up a whole human being. C S Lewis’ God is central to this new natural philosophy, explaining away rationality and materialism like things from our past. Only God exists. Don’t take my word for it, read Prof John G Guest Jr’s article here.

Worldview: Sigmund Freud & C S Lewis

All of us, whether we realize it or not, have a worldview; we have a philosophy of life our attempt to make sense out of our existence. It contains our answers to the fundamental questions concerning the meaning of our lives, questions that we struggle with at some level all of our lives, and that we often think about only when we wake up at three o'clock in the morning. The rest of the time when we are alone we have the radio or the television on anything to avoid being alone with ourselves.

Pascal maintained the sole reason for our unhappiness is that we are unable to sit alone in our room. He claimed we do not like to confront the reality of our lives; the human condition is so basically unhappy that we do everything to keep distracted from thinking about it.

The broad interest and enduring influence of the works of Freud and Lewis result less from their unique literary style than from the universal appeal of the questions they addressed; questions that remain extraordinarily relevant to our personal lives and to our contemporary social and moral crises.

From diametrically opposed views, they talked about issues such as, “Is there meaning and purpose to existence?” Freud would say, “Absolutely not! We cannot even, from our scientific point of view, address the question of whether or not there is meaning to life.” But he would declare that if you observe human behavior, you would notice the main purpose of life seems to be to find happiness to find pleasure. Thus Freud devised the ‘pleasure principle’ as one of the main features of our existence.

Lewis, on the other hand, said meaning and purpose are found in understanding why we are here in terms of the Creator who made us. Our primary purpose is to establish a relationship with that Creator.

[Dr Armand Nicholi, speech at a faculty/alumni luncheon hosted by Dallas Christian Leadership at Southern Methodist University on September 23, 1997]

Just a dream

Maybe there is no creation, no evolution. Maybe what we see is just a dream. A dream dreamt by us… or more precisely, dreamt by the ‘I’ – the ego – in us.

Because the ego wants to believe that there is existence of a world. Because the existence of a world is an affirmation of the ego itself. The ego’s raison d’etre.

Maybe, because the dream is in our minds, it has no substance. And, if it has no substance, it cannot be real. And, if it is not real, then it has never been created… nor evolved.

Maybe this is the mystery of life.

But, even if this were true, would we believe it? Would we accept it?

A single truth

In the Christian world, the debate over evolution versus creation is an interesting phenomenon. It seems to be a conflict over what is correct: science or religion; scientific proof or human faith. I mention ‘the Christian world’ here because the rest of the world, with its various other religions, is quite unperturbed by it. Perhaps, such a debate does not matter to them. And I wonder why. Why would it not matter to us where our beginnings lie?

I’m not sure if I have the answer to this question. But, I do know that, once in a while we all wonder who we are; where our ancestors and their ancestors came from. We do indeed wonder where our beginnings lie. We wonder how our universe materialised and how humans came into being. And I know that, on most occasions, we come away from our thoughts dissatisfied, unable to arrive at, or find, or discover, a suitable answer. Maybe that’s because we are always searching for one correct answer. We are seeking a single truth that would solve the puzzle of life instantly… and eternally.

But, why does it have to be one truth and not the other… or not another? Why should one truth override another? Why should a question have a single answer? Or, for that matter, why should many questions have one single answer?

When I had met Charles Handy, the famous British Management guru, he had narrated a story which was also mentioned in his book, ‘The Age of Unreason’: When I was a child and I solved a Maths problem, or answered a question from a History lesson, I checked the back of the book for a correct answer. If my answer matched the answer listed in the back of the book, I was right. It was that simple. It was only when I grew up that I realised that, in life, there isn’t always one correct answer. In fact, every problem has multiple – and sometimes distinctly varied – answers. [This is an approximation of our dialogue; I don’t remember the conversation exactly.]

At work, as a strategic marketing consultant, I am faced with this situation constantly. Every marketing problem has alternative solutions – several strategies that could solve the marketing problem equally well. Neither I nor my clients are one hundred per cent certain that one clear-cut strategy is the only correct solution – the absolutely correct answer – to a specific marketing problem. So, we go with what seems to be the best solution at that specific moment. And, this is something that marketers, businessmen and strategists battle with everyday of their lives. Whether they admit this to the world at large or not, this is a fact of life.

Perhaps, therein lies the truth we are seeking: that there is no single truth in life, but several alternatives to choose from. Maybe, in the Christian world, evolution and creation are simply two alternatives to life’s big question.

What’s all the fuss about?

When I see, or hear of, people fighting over the creation of the world and the evolution of the human specie, I stand back and wonder what’s going on. I mean, let’s be honest here. None of us were around when these things happened. Neither do we have absolute proof of what had happened exactly.

Sure there’s evidence emerging here and there, now and then, adding to the lot which already exists in books of religion and science and history. And there are people of religion and science and history and philosophy – and even individuals like you and me – all trying to piece things together… making up their minds, updating their versions… to make sense of it all.

But, who’s to say which version is right? As I said, none of us were around when these things happened. For all we know, none of the versions we believe in today is even close to what the truth might be. In fact, our search for the truth may be on, but we may never know what really happened? Couldn’t that be God’s Will too?

Why don’t we just stop fighting over things we aren’t really sure of and concentrate on what we do know?

What we do know is this: We are here on Earth. So, why don’t we just focus our attention on this fact and put our energies into finding ways of living together in peace and harmony… showing compassion and respect for all of God’s creation?

If there is God, I’m sure He would want us to do that… regardless of our gender or age or race or colour of skin or religion or the language we speak or the food we eat or the clothes we wear or our place of residence. After all, we are all equal in His eyes.

Really, I don’t know what all the fuss is about?

God came much later

With the continuing debate over Intelligent Design, and what a proper Christian should teach his children, human evolution is still a mystery to us. Not just from a historical or scientific point of view, but from the moral view of educating our children with the truth about man’s origins on Earth. What happened when; and what happened after.

If you’ve been reading my posts in the last couple of weeks, by now, you would have picked up a layman’s idea of how early man lived his life. Perhaps you already know much more than what I’ve written about. But, Christian or not, you cannot deny the fact that man evolved. That what man is today – with his mobilephone and microwave, computer and camera, automobile and airplane, science and surgery, art, music and literature – was not how he used to be. That over the years, by applying his mind, man has progressed from an animal without clothes to create and define the cultures we see before us.

Early man had his tools, weapons, artefacts, pottery, baskets to store things in, mud-brick houses to live in, and food to eat. He had his earth, water, fire and the wheel. He probably also had a concept of air; he certainly knew about wind and storms. Physical things mattered to him. You might say, he lived in a materialistic world. God did not exist then. Sure, social and moral guidelines were practised by members of communities. And, there was procreation, of course – life and death. Even caring, compassion and love within human beings.

The concept of God came much later; originating in fear and insecurity, not in compassion and love as we teach our children today.

Come together

“One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me.”
[‘Come Together’ – The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969]

People come together in the larger interests of the community they live in. You may not believe this, going by the events around you, but it’s true. It’s a human trait, a tendency, to come together; and this trait has been with us even before civilisation. I say even before civilisation because the ‘coming together’ of people happened when the first human communities were formed – much before the ancient civilisations (as we recognise them today) were established.

This ‘coming together’ to form one homogeneous social and economic group is the first sign of human organisation. It’s most likely to have happened during the early Neolithic settlements, when man evolved to a pastoral life (herding animals and breeding them as a source of food) and practised agriculture (growing crops) on flat land near rivers. These settlements required to be managed too, and the first government, or the ‘coming together’ to form a political organisation, was probably established around this time.

Still, managing the environment was a challenge. Predators preyed, the land was not fertile enough, a lack of water or too much of it destroyed food and lives, climatic changes were misunderstood and misinterpreted, or sudden geological events created terror. Life was uncertain. Man began to hope – and pray – for an ideal world for himself. A world where no fear or distress existed; and even if these did exist, there was a way to find courage to overcome them.

And so, man created religion – a ‘coming together’ physically, socially and spiritually to free oneself from uncertainty, fear and distress.

Foundations

Not much is clearly known about man’s evolution. Fragments of man’s early life are discovered almost every day, and archaeologists and historians, while putting the pieces together, are forced to apply their imagination to draw conclusions.

One of the important questions that British archaeologist Steven Mithen tries to answer in his book, ‘After The Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC’ (discussed in ‘Stepping Out’, my 4 June 2005 post), is whether man evolved equally progressively all over the world. So far, it seems, he did not. Evidence from archaeological digs suggests that man had evolved in different paces in different places.

Not only that, even when man had evolved enough to build settlements which grew into civilisations – i.e. urban, planned, flourishing, well-governed settlements – around 3500 BC, these ancient civilisations appeared only in a few places across the globe. And, they came to an end just as mysteriously within a period of 3,000 years. Written records found in these civilisations are still being deciphered. Hence, archaeologists and historians are, once again, left with their imagination.

As much as Gordon Childe’s definition of civilisation encapsulated human achievements in terms of discoveries like the plough, the wheel, irrigation, writing, a system of measurements, the sailing ship, etc. (see my previous post), other archaeologists and historians have proposed that human organisation must have complemented human achievements in order to make a civilisation stand on its feet.

Human organisation, they said, included a centralised government (along with territorial/state management); social stratification or a class system (an administrative class, a privileged class in control of production, a priestly class, a working class, and producers); an economy (more precisely, the use of money in trade and transactions); a division of labour (according to skills); and a military for defence. Some have even suggested a tax system and population sizes (a minimum of 5,000 people staying together).

These were, then, the foundations of our civilisation. It was only later that academics thought of including culture (art, literature, music, cuisines, clothing, language, etc.) and a system of shared values in defining our ancient world.

An exceptionally long revolution

Revolutions are not supposed to last for years and years. They are deemed as great changes in a short span of time. So, when V Gordon Childe, one of the world’s greatest archaeologists, suggested a ‘Neolithic Revolution’ when early man moved from the ‘striking’ method of making and using tools to the ‘grounding’ (hand-rotating) method, he picked up a lot of criticism. After all, this change in method in making/using tools took anything upwards of 3,000 years. So what’s revolutionary about that?

Gordon Childe, however, did not limit his use of the term ‘Neolithic Revolution’ only to the method of making/using tools. He believed, this period in man’s evolution also ushered in agriculture (including irrigation), the formation of village-like settlements, domestication of animals, eating habits that included food made from grains, construction (evenly-measured mud-brick houses), the discovery of the wheel, the appearance of gods or deities, superstition, and methods of burial that suggested the concept of an after-life.

Moreover, he believed, in the context of the pace of change that we had witnessed earlier – when human evolution was taking hundreds of thousands of years or tens of thousands of years – a mere 3,000 years did seem like a short span of time.

In the Neolithic period, pottery appeared. First as items made from clay, hand-moulded to give rough shapes. These were primitive-looking pieces that lacked finesse by modern standards. Then, another discovery, the potter’s wheel, ushered in the concept of evenly-shaped mass-produced pottery. Not long after that, pottery was made from firing/baking the clay items, hardening the clay to make pottery last longer. Archaeological findings suggest that the early moulds for pottery were woven like baskets and layered with asphalt or bitumen.

But man’s evolution didn’t stop there. Man ‘discovered’ metal. That meant the discovery of minerals and ores from rocks and the earth’s soil, and better still, the extraction of metal from these ores through a process called smelting. This brought in the Bronze Age (bronze being an alloy of copper and tin), introducing copper and bronze artefacts… adding to (and replacing some of) early man’s collection of stone and bone tools and artefacts.

According to Gordon Childe, several elements were essential for a civilisation to exist. He identified them as the plough, irrigation, domesticated animals, specialised craftsmen, the wheeled cart, the smelting of copper and bronze, sailing ships, a solar calendar, writing, standards of measurement, urban centres, and a surplus of food necessary to support non-agricultural workers and others who lived in the settlements/communities (villages and urban centres).

A material life

Somewhere along the line, it’s not clearly known when, man began to make tools of a more sophisticated type. These tools were made not by striking one stone against another – the older method which gave rough edges – but by rubbing and grinding one stone against another using a hand-rotating movement. This was a remarkable upgrade in technology of that time, and early man began to make tools with smoother surfaces and sharper edges.

Apart from developing hunting and fighting weapons of better quality, this technology ushered in a whole range of tools for grinding grains, de-husking seeds, axes for cutting down trees, primitive hoes for digging soil, and even utensils such as bowls.

It is suspected that around this time, cultivation was ‘discovered’… most probably by women who, when the men were out hunting, went beyond their duty of collecting fruits and roots and seeds to actually planting seeds and roots in the ground and nurturing them. This increased their supply of food near their settlements and made life more convenient. And so, introduced agriculture in human civilisation.

With agriculture came domestication of animals, with cattle, goats and sheep providing milk and meat. As much as barley and wheat and several other kinds of grains were cultivated, animals were bred in captive stocks. The buffalo, which was a chief source of food, had not yet been tamed and, therefore, hunting was still a preoccupation with the men. But, the dependence on hunting was definitely reduced by then.

Weaving of baskets (from reeds and grass) had begun around this time, supplementing utensils made from mud and clay. Clothes were still made from animal hides, but perhaps some were made from weaving hair taken from goats and sheep. Bones were used as tools and, along with conch shells and beads made from soft stones, were also used as ornaments worn by men and women. It became a material life, with individuals identified by their possessions.

As life settled, villages grew in numbers and elementary houses of clay and mud-bricks were constructed. There is evidence that these houses were used both for living and for storage of grains. For, by this time, the villages and communities had learnt to grow more food than needed for their bare subsistence, thereby producing a surplus (see my earlier posts). It is likely that this surplus was appropriated, most probably by force, by some non-producing people as their right.

With agriculture, ownership of domesticated animals, production and appropriation of surplus, construction of houses and development of skills in crafts, a sense of social differentiation or classification emerged. The concept of private property became important. No longer was division of labour and social differentiation in the community a matter of gender – i.e. men were hunters, women were gatherers. Villages and communities fell into a structured social order. They needed to be managed – and governed.

The first art galleries

Life was hard in those Paleolithic days. The average life span of prehistoric man is estimated (by today’s scientific measures) to have been less than 30 years. Hunting was a preoccupation, with animals providing our ancestors their main meals. Yet, there was something sacred about this, and early cave art tells us that our ancestors considered relationships between humans and animals to be important.

Cave art – i.e. paintings by prehistoric man found on the walls and ceilings of caves – came into public attention when the first cave paintings were found, accidentally by a little girl, in Altamira, northern Spain in 1879. Since then, thousands of similar paintings have been discovered in caves across the world, the earliest dating back some 27,000 years ago. The interesting thing is, no matter where on Earth cave art is discovered, the similarities between them, in terms of subject matter and style, are amazing.

The paintings look like line drawings of animals and humans in stick-like forms, mostly depicting hunting scenes. A few show women and children, such as the one of a woman carrying a load on her head, dated 8,000 years ago, found in the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh, India. It seems charcoal was the main ingredient in the black paint used in many of these cave paintings.

By today’s standards of fine arts, prehistoric cave art is childish, even clumsy. Yet, these collections of cave paintings represent what would be the first art galleries in human history. Even today, they are an enigma to historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and sociologists. In some caves, according to dating measures, paintings were discontinued and resumed thousands of years later. Why, no-one knows for sure.

Records suggest that cave art continued for 20,000 years or so, and came to an end when the hunters’ precarious way of life disappeared. This happened, slowly, as early man began to rely more on grains and vegetables for his food, and moved to plain open spaces which allowed cultivation. By this time, of course, human populations had increased, making it difficult for larger groups of people to stay in or near caves.